UGOLIN ET SES FILS
Any Resemblance To The Prime Minister Is Coinicidental

Yesterday was the 179th anniversary of the birth of Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux.

Like many nineteenth-century French sculptors, Carpeaux was from the working class. Son and grandson of stonemasons in Valenciennes, he was apprenticed as a boy to Debaisieux, a plasterer. Since drawing was a necessary tool of his trade, Carpeaux was enrolled in the Académie de Peinture, Sculpture et Architecture in Valenciennes, and, after his family's relocation to Paris in 1838, at the École Gratuite de Dessin (or Petite École) until 1843. That these two schools were open to instruct youths like Carpeaux in drawing was part of a government policy to encourage the application of the fine arts to industry.

[M. Carpeaux was accepted for study at the renowned École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in 1844.] During training at the École des Beaux-Arts, Carpeaux additionally studied with Romantic sculptor François Rude.* In 1850, he abandoned Rude's studio for that of Francisque Duret,** a teacher at the school under whose tutelage Carpeaux achieved an honorable mention for his Achilles Wounded in the Heel (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Valenciennes) in the Prix de Rome competition the same year. This was followed by a second place for his figure Philoctetes on Lemnos. In 1854, he won the Grand Prix de Rome for his group Hector and His Son Astyanax (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Valenciennes).

[In 1856, enrolled in the French Academy in Rome he began a five-year curriculum at Villa Medici.] Many drawings from his study in Rome show that Carpeaux sketched his surroundings constantly. He was especially receptive to the works of Michelangelo, whose gestural poses he observed carefully and incorporated into his own design for a fifth-year assignment. The resulting multifigural plaster group, Ugolino and His Sons, renders a scene from Dante's Divine Comedy (Canto 33) in which the Pisan Count Ugolino della Gherardesca and his sons are punished by starvation. This work caused a sensation in Rome and the boldness and vigor of Carpeaux's dramatic rendition contrasted sharply with the prevailing Neoclassical formulae of the French Academy. It immediately established Carpeaux as the heir of the Romantic sculptors of the 1830s.

M. Carpeaux went on to great success, becoming a favorite of the imperial house. When political fortunes swept away his wealthy patrons, he resorted to the production of editions, small figurines based on his larger projects. Shortly before his death he was awarded the Cross of the Légion d’honneur.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC has the original marble of the Ugolino group done for the Universal Exposition at Paris in 1867 (the earlier exhibited model was in plaster).

The French must make do with something less at the Orsay Museum. A bronze copy, because of the medium, is much softened and its dark coloring and surface gloss give an entirely different, less satisfying, effect. There is also a small terracotta study that can only suggest the marble.

On your next NYC trip we encourage you to take the time to visit the Met if only to see this one sculpture. There is nothing quite like standing beneath it.

* François Rude (1784-1855), best known for his sculpture group Départ des volontaires de 1792 (scil., La Marseillaise) for the Arc de Triomphe.

** Francisque Duret (1804-1865), known for statuary for the tomb of Napoleon.

PFFT (What is this?): Nothing like it 4 | Rayonnement français 4

TODAY In French History, III

1958 May 13 -- an army junta under General Massu seizes power in Algiers. General Salan becomes head of civil authority. The junta demands that de Gaulle be named to head a government of national union.

Almost 50 years ago...how time flies.