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

Clésinger was an ambitious man, impatient for success. To ease a favourable reception for his work he became friends with the leading critics. He succeeded in 1847 by causing a sensation with his Woman Bitten by a Snake, a very literal nude depiction of a well-known courtesan who had been the mistress of both the artist and the poet and critic Baudelaire.

Clésinger's work was rarely understated; as Baudelaire wrote of his friend: "As vices go, I agree with him [Clésinger] that excess is worth more than meaness."

Clésinger's continuing ambition led him to aspire to a chair in Académie des Beaux Arts, and to this end he began to practise a more academic form of sculpture.  As the critic for L'Artiste wrote in 1863 "Is it not to obtain this [chair] more promptly that Clésinger has finally thrown himself into the arms of Greek revivalism?" 

It is to this period of classicising academicism that the present model belongs. Clésinger exhibited four models of Sapho at the Salon after 1858.

RELATED LITERATURE
Romantics to Rodin, pp.174-75; Lami, vol.I, pp.393-405