ASTRUC, ZACHARIE

ASTRUC, ZACHARIE (1839–1907), French sculptor, painter, and writer. Astruc went to Paris from Angers as a boy. He studied art there and while still a student founded the Quart d'Heure: Gazette des Gens à Demi-Sérieux. A member of the Society of French Artists, Astruc contributed sculptures and paintings to the Salon des Champs Elysées. He was very successful and received many awards. Some of his more celebrated sculptures are his bust of Manet, Mars et Venus, Hamlet, Le Roi Midas, and his copy of Alonzo Cano's statue of St. Francis of Assisi. Astruc was also a versatile writer who wrote art criticism, poems, novels, short stories, and plays. He published a novel and a book of poems in Spanish. Astruc was the author of a collection of art criticism, Les Quatorze Stations du Salon de 1859, with a preface by George Sand. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Dictionnaire biographique du départment de Marne-et-Loire (1894).