This life-sized marble sculpture depicts the French composer André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry standing in a somewhat strange pose. The figure leans against a column with one leg resting a step above the other. That leg is exposed from under the robes that cover the rest of his body. He holds a scroll in his left hand and a plume in his right. A book is open on the ground as if it had fallen there.
The Museum's website (
visit link) adds:
"The Composer André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry (1741–1813)
Artist: Jean-Baptiste Stouf (Belgian (active France), Paris 1742–1826 Charenton-le-Pont, France)
Date: 1804–8
Culture: French, Paris
Medium: Marble
Dimensions: Overall (confirmed): 67 1/4 x 36 1/4 x 30 5/8 in. (170.8 x 92.1 x 77.8 cm)
Classification: Sculpture
Credit Line: Purchase, Josephine Bay Paul and C. Michael Paul Foundation Inc. Gift and Charles Ulrick and Josephine Bay Foundation Inc. Gift, 1969
Accession Number: 69.77
On view in Gallery 549...
Commissioned in 1804 by the Comte de Livry and placed in the Opéra Comique in 1809, where it remained until 1887. Incised on the column are the names of forty-one of the sixty-odd operas composed by Grétry for the Opéra-Comique and the Académie de Musique. The informality of Grétry's costume and pose links this work to 18th century depictions of men of inspiration and genius, such as Handel's Roubiliac."
Wikipedia (
visit link) adds:
"André Ernest Modeste Grétry (French: [g??t?i]; 8 February 1741 – 24 September 1813) was a composer from the Prince-Bishopric of Liège (present-day Belgium), who worked from 1767 onwards in France and took French nationality. He is most famous for his opéras comiques...
He was born at Liège, his father being a poor musician. He was a choirboy at the church of St. Denis (Liège). In 1753 he became a pupil of Jean-Pantaléon Leclerc and later of the organist at St-Pierre de Liège, Nicolas Rennekin, for keyboard and composition and of Henri Moreau, music master at the collegiate church of St. Paul. But of greater importance was the practical tuition he received by attending the performance of an Italian opera company. Here he heard the operas of Baldassarre Galuppi, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, and other masters; and the desire of completing his own studies in Italy was the immediate result. To find the necessary means he composed in 1759 a mass which he dedicated to the canons of the Liège Cathedral, and it was at the cost of Canon Hurley that he went to Italy in March 1759. In Rome he went to the Collège de Liège. Here Grétry resided for five years, studiously employed in completing his musical education under Giovanni Battista Casali. His proficiency in harmony and counterpoint was, however, according to his own confession, at all times very moderate.
His first great success was achieved by La vendemmiatrice, an Italian intermezzo or operetta, composed for the Aliberti theatre in Rome and received with universal applause. It is said that the study of the score of one of Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny's operas, lent to him by a secretary of the French embassy in Rome, decided Grétry to devote himself to French comic opera. On New Year's Day 1767 he accordingly left Rome, and after a short stay at Geneva (where he made the acquaintance of Voltaire, and produced another operetta) went to Paris.
There for two years he had to contend with the difficulties attendant on poverty and obscurity. He was, however, not without friends, and by the intercession of Count Gustaf Philip Creutz, the Swedish ambassador, Grétry obtained a libretto from Jean-François Marmontel, which he set to music in less than six weeks, and which, on its performance in August 1768, met with unparalleled success. The name of the opera was Le Huron. Two others, Lucile and Le tableau parlant, soon followed, and thenceforth Grétry's position as the leading composer of comic opera was safely established.
Altogether he composed some fifty operas. His masterpieces are Zémire et Azor and Richard Coeur-de-lion—the first produced in 1771, the second in 1784. The latter in an indirect way became connected with a great historic event. In it occurs the celebrated romance, O Richard, O mon Roi, l'univers t'abandonne, which was sung at the banquet – "fatal as that of Thyestes," remarks Carlyle – given by the bodyguard to the officers of the Versailles garrison on 3 October 1789. La Marseillaise not long afterwards became the reply of the people to the expression of loyalty borrowed from Grétry's opera. Richard Cœur de Lion was translated and adapted for the English stage by John Burgoyne.
Grétry was the first to write for the "tuba curva", an instrument that existed from Roman times as the cornu. He used the tuba curva in music that he composed for the funeral of Voltaire. His opera-ballet La caravane du Caire, with modest turquerie exoticism in harp and triangle accompaniment, is a rescue adventure along the lines of Die Entführung aus dem Serail; premiered at Fontainebleau in 1783, it remained in the French repertory for fifty years."