Paul Dardé

After military service at Montpellier, he attended evening classes at the École des Beaux-Arts where he won several prizes and a grant to cover a trip to Italy.

He subsequently returned to Montpellier where he completed a sculpture of "Jeanne d'Arc" and several compositions for tombs in the cemetery at St Lazare.

In 1920, he was awarded the Grand Prix National des Arts and his composition entitled "Faune" was put into the Musée Rodin, and then in the park of the Château de Vizille.

In 1930 he completed a bust of Macbeth and a statue of a prehistoric man which was placed at the entry to the Musée des Eyzies.

Despite these successes he had many problems and in 1935 left Paris leaving a trail of debts and as a consequence of his financial woes his works were seized and his studio put up for sale, which reportedly led him to develop a persecution mania.

He set himself up in Saint-Maurice-Navacelles and worked on drawings with various themes; a Chanson de Roland, la Croisade des Albigeois, Dante, Macbeth, Hamlet, the Bible, Attila, les hommes préhistoriques et moyenâgeux, les Mongols, Tolstoï and Beethoven.

Age and bad health forced him eventually to return to Lodève and he died in relative poverty there on 29 December 1963.

Four of the women stand at the rear whilst a fifth, possibly the widow or mother of the dead soldier, lies at his side.

He tries to show the different social classes who all suffered losses in that most terrible war; all sectors of society were to lose loved-ones.

The rear and sides of the mausoleum have false arched windows but at the front is an opening covered by an ornamental iron grille.

This comprises the body of a dead soldier who is watched over, not by an angel or a grieving wife or mother but by a nude woman who has been likened by some to a circus or cabaret performer.

[8][9] The Dardé composition on the Saint-Martin-de-Londres war memorial includes the carving of a rifle, oak leaves and the Croix de Guerre.

This work is located at Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil in the Dordogne,[15] a model named Homo sapiens neanderthalensis is present at Lodève (Hérault, France) in the Halle Dardé.