196 years ago, on 11 May 1827, the sculptor Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux was born in Valenciennes. His work was the product of a classical education (Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, a period at the Villa Medici as a Prix de Rome laureate), a strong temperament and a passionate nature with a taste for movement and spontaneity. "Sculpture is life; life is movement" he said to his friend Alexandre Falguière as they walked the streets of Rome. Under the Second Empire (1852-1870), Paris was modernising and public commissions were pouring in. There was no shortage of projects for the artists, but the pressure was strong to respect the calendar and the academicism in place.
By nature a rebel against regulations, Carpeaux clashed with the architects, who blamed him for being late and for not respecting their roadmaps. His friend Charles Garnier, who nicknamed him "the terror of architects", nevertheless commissioned him for The Dance, one of the four groups adorning the south façade of the Opéra. Hector Lefuel, the architect of the new Louvre, threatened to deprive Carpeaux of the ornamentation of the south side of the Flore pavilion, because the projecting figure of the Triumph of Flora broke the balance of the lines of the façade, but Napoleon III arbitrated and maintained Carpeaux. Once unveiled, Carpeaux's works were often the subject of controversy among critics and the public, who were puzzled by his attraction to naturalism and realism. But on the whole, his colleagues recognised his talent, evoking both the prodigious life that emanated from his creation, through the movement that he had reintroduced into statuary as a worthy successor to François Rude, and the lively embodiments of the busts that he modelled, capturing a smile, restoring the intensity of a glance. For Rodin, "Carpeaux made the most beautiful busts of our time", and his works marked the entire generation of sculptors who followed him in the 1880s.
Let us now discover the Parisian works of J-B. Carpeaux, either on site or in the Musée d'Orsay, which has in its collections models dating from the conception of the works, and copies made by Carpeaux in his Atelier in Auteuil.
The pediment on the south side of the Pavillon de Flore in the Louvre is decorated with a high relief France Carrying Light into the World and Protecting Science and Agriculture (1866). The allegorical figures of Science and Agriculture are inspired by Michelangelo's Day and Night for the Medici tomb in Florence. Below is the high relief The Triumph of Flora (1866). The goddess emerging from the foliage, surrounded by mischievous lovers, is emblematic of Carpeaux's art. She is a young woman with a bright smile, brimming with vibrant life, inspired by Flemish art, and Rubens in particular.
The Dance (1869), a round of bacchantes around a central genius, a group from which emanates a frenzied verve, an exuberant and joyful ardour, was one of the four groups adorning the façade of the Opéra Garnier. In poor condition, it was removed in 1964 to protect it from atmospheric pollution, transferred to the Louvre and then to the Musée d'Orsay where it can be seen today. It is a copy, made in 1963 by the sculptor Jean Juge, commissioned by the Atelier Paul Belmondo, which has since been displayed on the façade of the Opera House, currently hidden by renovation work. On the other hand, from the rue Scribe, one can admire the bronze bust of Charles Garnier surmounting the Charles Garnier Monument (1903), made from a plaster model by Carpeaux in 1867.
The last work of the sculptor to be seen in Paris is a group dominating the Observatory fountain, commissioned in 1867 by Baron Haussmann from the architect Gabriel Davioud. The ornamentation of the fountain, located in the Jardin des Explorateurs in the continuation of the Avenue de l'Observatoire, reflects the activity of the latter, founded by Louis XIV in 1667. Based on the instructions of the architect - hours of the day, meridian axis, four cardinal points - J-B. Carpeaux represents the cardinal points in the form of female figures, allegories of the four parts of the world (Africa, America, Europe, Asia), which follow the rotation of the globe, and support the celestial sphere.
After the sculptor's death in 1875, his family kept alive the memory of his works and collected the models and pieces he had created in a house located at 39, boulevard Exelmans (close to the studio, at number 25, where he had worked), which took the name of Atelier Carpeaux. Two recesses on the façade host two of his works: Flore crouching and the Fisherman with a shell. This boy who is delighted by the whisper of the sea in a shell was his first success during his stay in Rome in 1857.
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