ABSTRACT
Antoine-Sébastien Falardeau (1822-1889) and the
Old Master Copy in the Nineteenth Century
Virginia Nixon
1988
This thesis examines the career of the Quebec-born Old
Master copyist Antoine-Sébastien Falardeau (1822-1889, and the conceptual and physical
milieu in which he worked. Chapter one corrects and amplifies the biography of the artist.
Chapter, two proposes a framework within which to set the changes that occurred in the
concept(s) and functions of the copy as a traditional way of understanding gave way to the
modern. The earlier copy was an accepted part of a system of artistic production in which
the work of art was seen as essentially reproducible. With the advent of the
Romantic/modern conviction that the artwork was the personal, spontaneous production of a
specific individual, the copy lost status and its position shifted from the mainstream to
the periphery of art production. The nineteenth-century-souvenir copy and the use of
copies in the new museums founded to provide a morally-oriented public education are
discussed, as is the situation of the copy in Quebec where earlier concepts and functions
survived. In Chapter Three the structures and regulations that governed the production of
copies in Florence are described. An appendix lists the works produced by Falardeau.
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