Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux

Comte Edouard Vallerand de la Fosse (1831-1915) [to whom dedicated by the sitter]

Carpeaux modelled his portrait of Gérôme in London, where he had arrived in September 1870 following Napoleon III's downfall following the Battle of Sedan. He was joined in March 1871 by Gérôme, who had fled the instability of the Paris Commune. Gérôme's towering reputation proceeded him, as is evidenced by Carpeaux's inscription on the present bust: Al sommo / pittore Gérôme (to the supreme painter Gérôme). The portrait bust of the painter is arguably one of Carpeaux's most engaging, with the emphasis on the sitter's slender neck and turn of the head. Edouard Papet has pointed out the Romantic hairstyle which recalls images of Franz Liszt, and suggests that Carpeaux may have been influenced by a portrait of the young Gérôme by Louis-Valentin-Elias Robert (op. cit., p. 236). Contemporaries compared Gérôme's apparent stoicism with the famous Capitoline Brutus bust which stares out impassively at the viewer. Interestingly, Gérôme recorded the circumstances surrounding the creation of the portrait:

I hasten to send you what you ask about Carpeaux, or rather about my bust by him. It was in England in 1871 that he did it. We were both in London with our families, and as in that period he had hardly any money and part of his time was unoccupied, he suggested to do my bust as a friend, which I accepted eagerly, and I did well to do so as he produced on that occasion one of his best works. From the first sitting, the work was so well in place, so well con- structed, so right, that it was already striking in its truth- fulness. It only lacked the delicacy of modeling and execution that he knew how to supply in the following sittings. This bust was very rapidly made, as if to say taken by storm. That is why it has to a very high degree the qualities that distinguish works in rough outline, that is to say life itself. Also at the exposition of 1872 where it appeared it obtained a very big success; it was nicknamed 'the talking beheaded man.'

On our return to Paris I was to make his portrait in exchange. Once we were both back we found ourselves, he and I, with a lot of business on our hands, and at the end of a certain time I spoke to him again about his planned portrait. At that moment he wasn't able; later we picked a day and I was waiting for him when I received a word of excuse from him letting me know that he didn't have a second at his disposal. Another wait-during this time the terrible sickness that was to carry him away had gotten worse. This work, which interested me a lot, couldn't be undertaken and that was always a great regret to me, because I would have wanted to sign with my name the portrait of one of the greatest sculptors of modern times.

J.L. Gérôme, in a letter to Fromentin, 25 August 1878, as quoted by Papet (op. cit. pp. 234-236).

The model exists predominantly in terracotta casts, but also in bronze and plaster, including bronzes in the musée d'Orsay (inv. no. RF 1836) and the Ny Carlsburg Glypotek (inv. no. MIN 1493). A marble carved by a practitioner is in the J. Paul Getty Museum (inv. no. 88.SA.8).

The present plaster bust is important because it is inscribed with a dedication to a friend by Gérôme himself.

RELATED LITERATURE

E. Papet, J. D. Draper, Carpeaux 1827-1875: Un sculpteur pour l'empire, exh. cat. Musée d'Orsay and Metropolitan Museum of Art, Paris and New York, p. 211, nos. 154-155; M. Poletti and A. Richarme, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux sculpteur: catalogue raisonné, France, 2003, p. 134