  About the Artwork
  
  
  Houdon, the greatest French neoclassical portrait sculptor, has captured the American inventor's complex character—intelligent, self-assured, energetic, and sensitive—qualified perhaps by the merest trace of discouragement, reflecting the problems with his imperfect experiments, thus far, with submarines and steam-powered ships attempted off the French coast. Fulton's strikingly handsome appearance is reinforced by his austere yet elegant French attire and fashionable hair style. He was thirty-eight, an American living in Paris, when he posed for the celebrated French sculptor.
Houdon portrays Fulton's tenacity through restrained modeling. The choice of Fulton as a subject was consistent with Houdon's admiration of men of science and diplomacy, including such preeminent Americans as Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin.
  
  
  Title
  Robert Fulton
  
  
  Artwork Date
  ca. 1804
  
  Artist
  Jean-Antoine Houdon
  
  
  
  Life Dates
  1741-1828
  
  
  
  
  Nationality
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Definitions for nationality may vary significantly, depending on chronology and world events.
  Some definitions include:
  Belonging to a people having a common origin based on a geography and/or descent and/or tradition and/or culture and/or religion and/or language, or sharing membership in a legally defined nation.
  
  
  
  French
  
  
  
  Culture
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Cultures may be defined by the language, customs, religious beliefs, social norms, and material traits of a group.
  
  
  
  
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  Medium
  Marble
  
  
  Dimensions
  Overall (including socle): 28 3/4 × 20 × 12 3/4 inches (73 × 50.8 × 32.4 cm)
  
  
  Classification
  Sculpture
  
  
  Department
  European Sculpture and Dec Arts
  
  
  Credit
  Gift of Dexter M. Ferry, Jr.
  
  
  
  Accession Number
  
  
  
  This unique number is assigned to an individual artwork as part of the cataloguing process at the time of entry into the permanent collection.
  Most frequently, accession numbers begin with the year in which the artwork entered the museum’s holdings.
  For example, 2008.3 refers to the year of acquisition and notes that it was the 3rd of that year. The DIA has a few additional systems—no longer assigned—that identify specific donors or museum patronage groups.
  
  
  
  49.23
  
  
  Copyright
  Public Domain
