19th and 20th Century Sculpture: Including Works by Rodin’s Teacher, Carrier-Belleuse

19th and 20th Century Sculpture: Including Works by Rodin’s Teacher, Carrier-Belleuse

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 29. Bust of Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (1827-1875).

Francis de Saint-Vidal

Bust of Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (1827-1875)

Lot Closed

July 13, 10:30 AM GMT

Estimate

15,000 - 20,000 GBP

Lot Details

Description

Francis de Saint-Vidal

French

1840–1900

Bust of Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (1827-1875)



signed and dated: F. Saint-Vidal / 1875 and titled: CARPEAUX

plaster

70cm., 27½in.


together with a framed photograph of Jean Baptiste Carpeaux, with a label inscribed: David & Constance Yates, Fine Drawings, Works of Art, Box 580 Lenox Hill Station, New York 10021 / Jean-Baptiste CARPEAUX (1927-1875), Carbon print ca. 1873. Numa blanc, photographer. 

Perhaps Alexandre Dumas fils (1824-1895), 1885


S. Lami, Dictionnaire des sculpteurs de l’école française du dix-huitième siècle, t. II, Paris, 1911, p. 226

Paris, Salon, 1876, no. 3596

This extraordinary bust is a portrait of the great Second Empire sculptor Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux. Exhibited in the Salon in 1876, the year following Carpeaux's death, it appears in a contemporary engraving by Charles Gillot after Adolphe Alphonse Géry-Richard, of which there is a copy in the British Museum (inv. no. 2006,U.2360). Interestingly Saint-Vidal exhibited another plaster bust of Carpeaux at the Salon of 1885, no. 4207. This bust is recorded as having been in the collection of Alexandre Dumas fils (1824-1895) (Lami, op. cit.). Given that the ownership of the bust is disclosed by Lami, it is possible that the bust exhibited in 1885 is the same as the present plaster. Saint-Vidal was born in Milan to a French father and an English mother. He was introduced to his master Carpeaux by Alexandre Dumas fils (1824-1895), and exhibited at the Paris Salon for the first time in 1875.