Aizelin Eugene-Antoine
(b Paris, 8 July 1821; d Paris, 4 March 1902).
French sculptor. A
pupil of Etienne-Jules Ramey and Augustin-Alexandre Dumont at the
Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, he made several unsuccessful attempts
to win the Prix de Rome. He nevertheless pursued a successful career
and produced sculpture as markedly classical in style as that of his
contemporaries who had studied at the Académie de France in Rome. He
received numerous commissions from the State and from the City of
Paris for the decoration of public buildings, working on the three
great Parisian building projects of the Second Empire (1851–70), the
new Louvre, the Opéra and the Hôtel de Ville, as well as on
theatres, churches and other institutions. Apart from decorative
sculpture, his output consists of classicizing statues on
mythological, biblical and allegorical subjects, which were
exhibited at the Salon and were sometimes reproduced in bronze
editions. Among these works are Psyche (marble, 1863; Quimper, Mus.
B.-A.), Judith (bronze, 1890; Le Mans, Mus. Tessé) and Hagar and
Ishmael (marble, 1889; Belleville-sur-Bar, Sanatorium). He also
exhibited genre sculpture, widely circulated in bronze editions
(many cast by Ferdinand Barbedienne, 1810–92), including Marguerite
in Church, Mignon and The Youth of Raphael. A collection of his
works was given to the Musée Départemental de l’Oise, Beauvais, in
1975.
