GALLE

Biografia

? Galle, André
(b St Etienne, Loire, 15 May 1761; d Paris, 21 Dec 1844). French medallist. He first worked in Lyon as an engraver of dies in a button factory, becoming its owner in 1786. In 1790 enthusiasm for the French Revolution inspired him to produce a medal for the Fédération. He followed this with a trial piece for the proposed bell-metal coinage, bearing a portrait of the Marquis de Mirabeau as the French Demosthenes, and in the following year another piece, representing French Liberty (in imitation of Augustin Dupré’s American Liberty). Galle was sent to Paris to take part in the deliberations on the new coinage; there he worked for Dupré at the Mint, while studying sculpture under Antoine-Denis Chaudet. His opportunity came when Dominique-Vivant Denon began to produce his medallic history of Napoleon’s reign. Galle’s numerous contributions included the Conquest of Upper Egypt, the Arrival of General Bonaparte at Fréjus, the Battle of Friedland and the Battle of Jena, while his coronation portrait of Napoleon (1806) was much admired. After the Bourbon Restoration Galle was soon reconciled with the new regime and received a number of important commissions, including a medal for the Entry of Louis XVIII into Paris in 1814 (ordered in 1816 and completed in 1822); at the same period he executed portraits of contemporaries such as Jacques-Louis David, Henry Grattan and Matthew Boulton. Galle was elected to the Institut de France in 1819 and was made a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur in 1825. In 1828 he invented an articulated chain of the kind later used in bicycles and devoted much of the rest of his life to its manufacture.
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