Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux

Walter Bimson, Arizona
Thence by descent

Laure de Margerie, La "Danse" de Carpeaux, Paris, 1989, discussed p. 17
Michel Polleti and Alain Richarme, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, sculpteur : Catalogue Raisonné de l'œuvre édité, Paris, 2000, illustrated p. 101
Harold Berman, Bronzes: Sculptors and Founders, 1800-1930, Chicago, 1977, vol. III, p. 139
 

The Three Graces is a rare bronze casting of one of Carpeaux’s few sculptures independentes modeled from his famous and monumental masterpiece La Genie de la Danse.  After scandalizing Parisian society with its 1869 unveiling on the facade of the Paris Opera, Genie was quickly recognized as a breakthrough in the expression of movement in sculpture during the Second Empire.  The composition of The Three Graces, presented alone without the hermaphroditic Genie, is fraught with a frenetic energy and complex movement.  Carpeaux was inspired by the sculpture of Michelangelo and sought to achieve the spirit reflected in this quote from his idol, "The dominating factor of his genius is action.  In reacting against the frigidity of antiquity he was carried away by his high spirit beyond nature.”  With their bounding centrifugal twirl, Carpeaux’s Bacchantes of Roses, Ivy and Laurels were seen to exemplify the fervent gaiety of the last years of the Empire.