MARIN, Joseph Charles
French sculptor. He emulated the graceful Rococo style of his master, Clodion, and enjoyed a successful career, working largely for private patrons and exhibiting at the Paris Salon from 1791 to 1833. Most of his works are terracotta busts, statuettes and groups made in imitation of Clodion’s erotic Rococo female figures, but with an added touch of realism and a more marked interest in varieties of texture. Among them are a Bust of a Girl (Paris, Musée Jacquemart-André), the statuettes Ganymede and Hebe (Bayonne, Musée Bonnat) and the Young Girl with a Dove (1791; Paris, Louvre). More severe is his group Canadian Indians at their Infant’s Grave (1794; private collection).
In 1801 he won the Prix de Rome for sculpture with the classicizing plaster bas-relief of Caius Gracchus Leaving his Wife Licinia to Rejoin his Partisans (Paris, Ecole National Supérieur des Beaux-Arts). This work and the bold and free terracotta sketch of Roman Charity (c. 1805; Besançon, Musée des Beaux-Arts) show that Marin was able to produce original works in different styles. In 1805 he was made a professor at the Académie de France in Rome; in the same year he finished the marble tomb of Pauline de Montmorin, Comtesse de Beaumont (Rome, S Luigi dei Francesi), commissioned by François-René, Vicomte de Chateaubriand. Marin’s most famous work is the marble Bather (1808; Paris, Louvre) in the Neoclassical style. His reputation was in decline before 1820, and he lived in some poverty towards the end of his life.
