son of sculptor Georges Philippe Clésinger
with Bertil Thorvaldsen (1832, Rome)
1847 – exhibits Woman Bitten by a Snake at Paris Salon
1849 – awarded the Légion d’honneur
1864 – Officer du Légion d’honneur; joins Photosculpture Society
Bronze foundries of Ferdinand Barbedienne and Marnyhac purchased rights to reproduce many of Clésinger’s sculptures for commercial sale
Rome (1832); Switzerland (1840); Florence (1843)
Napoleon III (Emperor of France); French government (Third Republic)
Pieta, n.d. (Church of the Madeleine, Besançon)
Estignard, Alexander. Clésinger: Sa Vie, Ses Œuvres (1900). Whitefish, MT : Kessinger, 2010 (in French)
Joyce, Wendy. “Sculpting the Modern Muse: Auguste Clésinger’s Femme Piquée par un Serpent,” Nineteenth-Century French Studies, vol. 35, no. 1 (Fall 2006): 166-88