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This large plaster portrait roundel was made by David D’Angers in 1838 shortly after the death of the sitter, Eustache-Hyacinthe Langlois. D’Angers had produced a bronze medal of Langlois in 1835 and had been commissioned to produce a larger cast for the artist’s tomb in Rouen following his death in 1838. Given the date and size of the present plaster it seems likely to have been cast by D’Angers in preparation for the bronze mounted on Langlois’s tomb which was constructed in the form of a druidic stone found in the forest of Rouvray. Langlois himself was a painter, engraver and writer best known for his important antiquarian activity in his native Normandy.
Langlois was born in Pont de L’Arche in Normandy, trained at the École de Mars in Paris under Jacques-Louis David. Based in Rouen from 1809, Langlois became a prolific designer of gothic subjects depicting the supernatural world of devils and sorcerers based on ancient legends and embellished by his imagination. Langlois devoted himself to the study and preservation of his Norman heritage, and gradually became well known for his writings and illustrations on historical subjects. In 1824 he became a member of the Rouen Academy, and began teaching art to young students. By 1825 he was a member of the Society of Antiquaries of Normandy, based in Caen, a member of the Royal Academy of Science, Belles-letters and Arts of Rouen. In 1828 Langlois was made professor de l’Ecole Gratuité de Dessin de Rouen. The school was situated in what had been the medieval convent of La Visitation Sainte-Marie in the rue Beauvoisine on a hill overlooking the cathedral. His pupils included Célestin Nanteuil, Frédéric Legrip and Gustave Flaubert. In 1831 the Musée des Antiquités was set up under the curatorship of Achille Deville, a friend of Langlois who immediately involved him in building and displaying the collection. Langlois’ antiquarian publication on Norman architecture was widely read and had an important influence on the work of both the antiquarian Augustus Charles Pugin and his son Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin. Pugin senior spent much time with Langlois whilst preparing his Specimens of the Architectural Antiquities of Normandy for publication. Langlois’s Essai historique illustrates and describes the celebrated window in Rouen Cathedral dedicated to Julian the Hospiraller, Pugin used the book when he was preparing his own lectures on stained glass.
Langlois and David d’Angers had known each other as students and remained friends. D’Angers sculpted a bust of Langlois now in the collection of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen. D’Angers additionally carved a profile of Langlois which was cast as a medallion and inscribed ‘to my friend’ Langlois by David and dated 1835. Both a bronze cast and a terracotta survive in the Louvre. Shortly after Langlois’s death in 1837 a fund was raised to erect a monument to Langlois, d’Angers was approached to provide an enlarged bronze medallion which was to be mounted on a druidic stone found in the forest of Rouvray. The bronze cast is on the same scale as the present plaster, it therefore seems likely that it was made in preparation for the funerary monument. The beautiful surface of the present plaster means that the lines from the individual sections of the mould are clearly visible, this gives a sense of the current plaster as forming part of the d’Angers’s process.