Paul Romain Marie Léonce Chevré is a french sculptor born in Brussels on July 5 in 1866. Really famous in Canada, his father was the sculptor Romain Paul Chevré. He exposed for the first time in 1890. It’s in 1898 that Quebec city asked him to create his Samuel de Champlain monument which made him famous. In 1912, Paul Chevré sculpted Wilfrid Laurier’s torso for the Château Laurier hotel in Ottawa. To participate to the building’s inauguration he went on the Titanic in April 1912. The boat wrecked in the night of the April 14 to the April 15 an Paul Chevré is miraculously saved by a life raft. He passed the two years after that incident travelling between Canada and France. It’s in that context that the artist sculpted Marianne ou la République, an important bronze statue, just before giving it to the Montreal’s Union Française in 1913. The statue is still in front of the association historic building’s entrance, on
the Viger East avenue.
Paul Chevré died at Asnières-sur-Seine on the February 20 in 1914
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Artwork description
The allegory depicts Marianne—also known as the French Republic—as a standing female figure with both hands resting on a sword whose tip points downward. Her head is crowned with a wreath of oak leaves and a Phrygian cap, two symbols of republican power. She wears an ancient-style tunic with a scale-patterned breastplate adorned with a Gorgon’s head, drawn from the ancient iconography of Athena. On the bronze base, two inscriptions can be read: “Alexis Rudier, foundryman, Paris” (on the left edge) and “P Chevre 13” (on the right edge).