Préault was, in sculpture, the embodiment of the Romantic genius. The artist's extreme originality in the 1830s and 1840s, and the importance of his work during the reign of Louis-Philippe and the Second Empire, gave rise to some of the most violent debates of the century. Having made his debut at the Salon of 1833, he was, like all the great Romantics, excluded from almost all the Salons of the July Monarchy, but he was able to pursue his profession as a sculptor thanks to private commissions, in particular in the funeral field, and to municipal and state commissions.
The abruptness of his compositions and his inventive treatment of the relief, which draws effects from a tragic melancholy or a frightful terror, upset the vision of sculpture. Through the violence of his subjects, the novelty of his compositions and the breath of his workmanship, he remains perhaps the greatest poet of misfortune in sculpture.
