Édouard Lantéri


Édouard Lantéri was a French-born British sculptor and medallist whose romantic French style of sculpting was seen as influential among exponents of New Sculpture. His name is also frequently spelled without accents as Edouard Lanteri and his first name sometimes given in its English form as Edward.

Life history

Lantéri was born in Auxerre, France but later took British nationality. He studied art in the studios of François-Joseph Duret and Aimé Millet and at the school of fine arts under Jean-Baptiste Claude Eugène Guillaume and Pierre-Jules Cavelier. A period of poverty led him to becoming a cabinetmaker, but in 1872, at the age of 24, on the recommendation of fellow sculptor Jules Dalou, he moved to London to work as a studio assistant to Joseph Edgar Boehm. He stayed at the studio until 1890 and influenced Boehm's pupil Alfred Gilbert.
Lantéri's sculptures were mainly modelled in clay before being cast in bronze, though he would also work in stone. He produced portrait busts, statuettes and life size statues.
As of 1880 he taught at the National Art Training School in South Kensington and in 1900 became the College's first Professor of Modelling ; in this role he was involved with the architectural and decorative sculpture for Sir Aston Webb's Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

Written works

Towards the end of Lantéri's life he wrote a series of three books, explaining the art of human and animal composition in sculpture. First released as a collection of three books, they are now commonly found as two, with the animal sculpture separate from the human form. These books are still common required texts for many sculpture courses. The foreword to the original book was by friend and fellow sculptor Auguste Rodin who refers to Lantéri as "Dear Master"