# DUMONT, Augustin-Alexandre [View the canonical artist record]() ## Artist - Lifespan: 1801–1884 - Profession: sculptor - School: French ## Biography Sculptor, part of the French family of sculptors. The first in a long line of sculptors was Pierre Dumont \(d. ?1737\), who was a member of the Accademia di S Luca, Rome, and sculptor to Leopold, Duke of Lorraine \(reg. 1697-1729\) Augustin-Alexandre Dumont was the great-grandson of François Dumont and son of Jacques-Edme Dumont. He entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, in 1818, won the Prix de Rome for sculpture in 1823 and spent the next seven years in Italy, producing works such as the Infant Bacchus Nurtured by the Nymph Leucothea \(1830; Semur-en-Auxois, Musée Municipal\). He returned to France shortly after the July Revolution of 1830; a succession of public commissions followed, including one for the statue of Nicolas Poussin for the Salle Ordinaire des Séances in the Palais de l'Institut de France, Paris \(1835; in situ\). The government of the Second Republic commissioned from him a statue of Maréchal Thomas Bugeaud de la Piconnerie \(c. 1850; version, Versailles, Château\). As well as the various large public sculptures of historical figures that he produced for provincial centres under the Second Empire, he executed a number of portrait sculptures, such as that of the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt \(1871; Versailles, Château\). Many of the public monuments that Dumont designed were destroyed under the Commune \(1871\); he was prevented by illness from producing any work after 1875. ## Related artworks - [François I]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()