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
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
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.