Biography
Gaston d'Illiers devoted all his life to his two passions: horses and sculpture. He was a very fine rider and showed a deep knowledge of horses. He decided to become a sculptor and took to modelling horses.
His statues were very appreciated from the start. He showed his productions in specialised exhibitions like "salon des artistes français" from 1899 to his death. He gained quite a reputation among horse experts and art connoisseurs. For example during his life the statue avant la course (before the race) was often given as a prize to the winner of a horse race or jumping.
His private life was quiet. He was a count and spent all his life in the centre of France, in Orléans and Olivet.
He often went hunting on horseback with friends in the woods nearby (Orleans forest, Sologne), and some of his works are related to hunting : le piqueux, la curée, retour de chasse...
He went twice on trips to Algeria in 1899 and 1910, and these trips gave him inspiration for some works which are still very appreciated: jument arabe, fauconniers, fantasia...
Read more about this topic: Gaston D'Illiers
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West [Cicily Isabel Fairfield] (1892–1983)
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)