Maxime Real del Sarte

Maxime Real del Sarte was born on 2 May 1888 in Paris, France, as the son of the sculptor Louis Desire Real and Marie Magdeleine Real del Sarte. He was a cousin of the painter Thérèse Geraldy and was also related to the composer Georges Bizet.[1] He graduated from the École des Beaux-Arts, and by 1911 was at the Académie Julian, where both his mother and an aunt were teachers.[2] He served in World War I, in the 106th Infantry Regiment of the French Army and had his left arm amputated in 1916 after being wounded at Verdun on 29 January.[1][3][2]

He was a member of the Société des Artistes Français and exhibited with them from early in his career.[4] He won the Grand Prix national des Beaux-Arts in 1921 for Le premier toit .[5][4] He designed over fifty war memorials in France, including the Monument aux morts des Armées de Champagne at the Ferme de Navarin at Suippes, which depicts both French and US soldiers (this design was also produced as a medallic plaque).[1][3][4][6] He also designed many statues of Joan of Arc, including one in Rouen placed effectively on the site where she was executed (1928).[7][2] Additionally, he designed busts for the Dukes of Guise and Orleans,[1] and a monument to King Edward VII at Biarritz (1922).[8]

He became involved with the right-wing Action française, where he became associated with Charles Maurras, Léon Daudet, Jacques Bainville, Maurice Pujo, Henri Vaugeois and Léon de Montesquiou.[5][9] He founded and led the royalist organisation Camelots du roi.[9][10] He was a devout and fervent Roman Catholic and a huge admirer of Joan of Arc.[10] When he found out that Francois Thalamas, a Professor at the Lycee Condorcet who was critical of Joan of Arc, was to give lectures at the Sorbonnes, he made sure to disrupt their course with his collaborators.[10] He founded the organization "Les Compagnons de Jeanne d'Arc".[11] He was wounded in an anti-parliamentary clash on 6 February 1934.

His statue of General Charles Mangin, which was made thanks to a subscription launched by Marshal Foch and erected on the Place Denys-Cochin, was destroyed by the Germans who occupied Paris in October 1940, on the express orders of Adolf Hitler, one of only two statues in Paris he ordered destroyed.[12] During World War II, he was awarded a medal by the Vichy regime.

He died on 15 February 1954 near Saint-Jean-de-Luz.