Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux

(b Valenciennes, 11 May 1827; d Courbevoie, 11 Oct 1875). French sculptor, painter, draughtsman and etcher. He was one of the leading sculptors of the Second Empire (1852-70) in France.

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The French sculptor and painter Jean Baptiste Carpeaux (1827-1875) stood apart from the neoclassic formulas of his time in the vehement expressiveness of his figures. The nude was a major motif of his large-scale allegorical works.

Jean Baptiste Carpeaux was born on May 11, 1827, in Valenciennes, the son of a mason. In 1842 he studied in Paris under the leading romantic sculptor, François Rude. The following year Carpeaux worked at the atelier of the sculptor Francisque Duret. Beginning in 1846 Carpeaux studied at the École des Beaux-Arts.

In 1854 Carpeaux won the Prix de Rome for his neoclassic statue Hector Imploring the Gods for His Son, Astyanax. At this time he also worked in a tempestuous romantic vein, as may be seen in Ugolino and His Starving Sons (1857-1861), which was executed and exhibited in Rome. The literary inspiration of this work was Dante's Inferno, where Carpeaux found the description of the suffering of Ugolino, who had to sit by in the Tower of Hunger as his sons starved to death. Its artistic inspiration was Michelangelo's Last Judgment. The group was well received in Italy but was criticized by the academicians in Paris, who held up its execution in marble until 1867, when it was financed by private funds to be shown at the Universal Exhibition at Paris.

Yet despite the conservative opposition Carpeaux was able to obtain important commissions. For the new wing of the Louvre, the Pavillon de Flore, he executed the pedimental figures (1863), comprising an Allegory of Imperial France, as well as a Triumph of Flora, a deeply cut relief in which light played dramatically over the surfaces of the ebulliently sensuous nudes.

Carpeaux's best-known work today is The Dance, a group in stone which the architect Charles Garnier commissioned in 1865 for the facade of his new Paris Opéra. Carpeaux worked on a series of models for 2 years. The work couples the intelligent control based on a neoclassic framework with a spirit of full-blown sensuousness. The rhythm of the figures, the effective openness of the composition, and the vigorous play of light and dark were ignored by many contemporary critics, who found only that the work was lewd. In his Fountain of the World's Four Corners, erected in Paris in 1874, four female nudes support a sphere above their heads. The vitality and animation of some of the figures show Carpeaux to be a precursor of Auguste Rodin and other pioneers of modern sculpture.

Carpeaux also produced a number of fine portrait busts, including those of the architect Vaudemer (1859); Charles Garnier (1869); Dr. Flaubert, the brother of the novelist Gustave Flaubert (1874); and the younger Alexandre Dumas (1874). Toward the end of his career he enjoyed the favor of Napoleon III and could take his pick of portrait commissions from the leaders of the Second Empire. Carpeaux died in Courbevoie on Oct. 12, 1875.

Further Reading

There is no biography of Carpeaux in English. Louise Clément-Carpeaux, La Vérité sur l'oeuvre et la vie de Jean Baptiste Carpeaux (2 vols., 1934-1935), in French, is the standard work. For background see D. Cady Eaton, A Handbook of Modern French Sculpture (1913), and Fred Licht, Sculpture: 19th and 20th Centuries (1967).

Additional Sources

Jouvenet, Nicole, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux: 1827-1875 …, Valenciennes (11, rue Saint-Jean, 59300): N. Jouvenet, 1974.

Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux
Illustration of Carpeaux in the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, after his death. His Flore is below him, and other work above
Born	11 May 1827(1827-05-11) Valenciennes
Died	12 October 1875 (aged 48) Courbevoie
Nationality	French
Field	Sculpture, Painting

Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (May 11, 1827 – October 12, 1875) was a French sculptor and painter.

Born in Valenciennes, Nord, son of a mason, his early studies were under François Rude. Carpeaux entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1844 and won the Prix de Rome in 1854, and moving to Rome to find inspiration, he there studied the works of Michelangelo, Donatello and Verrocchio. Staying in Rome from 1854 to 1861, he obtained a taste for movement and spontaneity, which he joined with the great principles of baroque art. Carpeaux sought real life subjects in the streets and broke with the classical tradition.

While a student in Rome, Carpeaux submitted a plaster version of Pêcheur napolitain à la coquille, the Neapolitan Fisherboy, to the French Academy. He carved the marble version several years later, showing it in the Salon exhibition of 1863. It was purchased for Napoleon III's empress, Eugènie. The statue of the young smiling boy was very popular, and Carpeaux created a number of reproductions and variations in marble and bronze. There is a copy, for instance, in the Samuel H. Kress Collection in the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.. Some years later, he carved the Girl with a Shell, a very similar study.

La Danse (The Dance), for the Opera Garnier, heavily criticized as being indecent

In 1861 he made a bust of Princess Mathilde, and this later brought him several commissions from Napoleon III.

Among his students were Jules Dalou, Jean-Louis Forain and the American sculptor Olin Levi Warner. Carpeaux died at age 48 in Courbevoie.

Work

• Ugolin et ses fils (Ugolino and his Sons) (1861, in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art)[1] with versions in other museums including the Musée d'Orsay
• The Dance, commissioned for the Opera Garnier in 1869, featuring several nude figures in a wild and boisterous dance, criticized as an offense to common decency
• Jeune pêcheur à la coquille (Neapolitan Fisherboy) - in the Louvre, Paris [2]
• Girl with Shell
• Antoine Watteau monument, Valenciennes
• Flora and bas-reliefs for the southern facade of the Pavillon de Flore, Palais du Louvre, for architect Hector Lefuel, 1865
• The multifigure allegorical group on the top of the City Hall of his home town, Valenciennes, 1860-1873
• Fontaine de l'Observatoire, also known as the Carpeaux Fountain, south of the Jardin du Luxembourg. Partly complete at his death, Carpeaux finished the terrestrial globe and the four figures of Asia, Europe, America and Africa

Images

Fountain of the Observatory, Jardin du Luxembourg

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux

• A page from insecula.com listing more views of Carpeaux's works (it may be necessary to close an advertising window to view this page)
• A page analysing Carpeaux's Ugolino, with numerous illustrations

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