Jean-Baptiste, called Auguste Clésinger French, 1814-1883

The possibility exists that this marble is a lost replica by Clésinger.  No other marble versions are known to us and the original Salon version for the Musée du Luxembourg is itself listed as non localisé in the Musée d'Orsay catalogue.


'This bull is a miracle. If Clésinger had never done another thing, on the basis of this bull alone, he would be in the first ranks of modern sculpture.' (Armand Barthet, L'Artiste, 1859.)


Clésinger had made a dramatic return to the Paris Salon in 1859 after a five year absence, exhibiting nine works including his Taureau Romain to represent his mastery of the animalier genre. The sculpture's impact was remarkable. Armand Barthet's review enthused further: 'It is impossible to describe, one must see it. I swear I never saw or dreamt of anything like it, and I know of only one thing in this genre which one can compare to it - Barye's Seated Lion which guards the entrance to the Tuileries...'. Even the anti-animalier critic Baudelaire admitted it 'has received well-deserved praise from everybody; it really is a very fine work'.  Clésinger was probably inspired by the antique carvings in the Sala degli Animali in the Vatican and so would have been honoured by Theophile Gautier's praise 'the Apis bull receiving divine honours did not have a prouder expression. Clésinger studied those great bulls of Clitumnus, animals so handsome and noble that they seem made for the priest's sacrificial knife rather than the butcher's cleaver'.

With the state acquiring it for the Musée de Luxembourg, the success of the Taureau Romain was assured. Clésinger went on to make several subsequent variants: a Combat de taureaux romains (1864) in red marble for the Musée de Marseille, of which a replica was listed as 'chez Lady Stephens, à Londres'; a Taureau vainqueur (1868) which was purchased by Napoleon III for the Tuileries; and a second Taureau Romain (1878), later known as the Toro Romano to distinguish it from the first, purchased for the Musée de Lille. The Barbedienne foundry, with whom Clésinger had close links, obtained the right to reproduce the model commercially in bronze, which they did in six different sizes. 

RELATED LITERATURE Barthet, vol.6, p.25; Lami vol.1, p.400; Kjellberg pp.215, 218; Romantics to Rodin p.177, no.60; Estignard pp.164, 166, 168, 171 (including illustration); Musée d'Orsay p.269