# Robert Fulton [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [HOUDON, Jean-Antoine]() - Date: 1751-1800 - Technique: Plaster, height 68,5 cm ## Commentary Robert Fulton c. 1803 Plaster, height 68,5 cm Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Houdon made over 150 portrait busts of the great men and women of his age, combining psychological perception with analytical reason to bring out the individual character of each sitter. His portraits of important Americans remain definitive. He portrayed Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson in Paris and visited the young United States to prepare for his marble statue of George Washington, now in Richmond. Robert Fulton, an inventor, artist, and engineer best known for having proved the commercial practicality of the steamboat, lived in Paris on and off from 1797 before returning to America in 1806. He made his first steamboat test on the Seine in 1803; he also invented a submarine, the Nautilus, while still in France, although he was unable to get support from the French or American governments for its development. ## Related artworks - [Antoine Louis Le Fèvre de Caumartin]() - [Bust of a Child]() - [Bust of Alexandre Brongniart]() - [Bust of Anne-Ange Houdon]() - [Bust of Diderot]() - [Bust of George Washington]() - [Bust of George Washington]() - [Bust of Mirabeau]() - [Bust of Napoleon]() - [Bust of the Artist's Wife]() - [Bust of the Comtesse de Sabran]() - [Bust of Thomas Jefferson]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()