Sarah Bernhardt

Studio of Edmond Lachenal, 1895

Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, November-December 1895;

Paris, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, May 1897

This astonishingly lively bust of the young Mars (Mars enfant) is a ceramic version of a marble bust by the celebrated sculptor and actress, Sarah Bernhardt. Signed by both Bernhardt and the ceramicist Edmond Lachenal, who exhibited the work in 1895, it epitomises the fruitful collaboration between the two artists.

Bernhardt championed Lachenal early in his career, commissioning an elaborate table service from him, which was shown at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1889. Their professional relationship led to a close personal friendship. As well as showing ceramic versions of many of Sarah Bernhardt’s models, Lachenal also exhibited works by sculptors such as Auguste Rodin and Prosper d’Epinay.

Sarah Bernhardt first presented the Mars enfant in marble at the Paris Salon of 1885. The ceramic version, which is almost certainly unique, was exhibited by Lachenal ten years later in 1895, at the Galerie Georges Petit, and in 1897 at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery. Alongside the Mars enfant, the 1895 exhibition included a ceramic version (now untraced) of Bernhardt’s Bellone enfant, which showed the infant goddess of war as Mars’s younger sister, and which the sculptor had clearly conceived as a pendant to the present model. A marble version of the Bellone was sold at Sotheby’s London on 11 July 2018 (lot 68).

The present bust exhibits Lachenal’s well-known velvety-matte glaze, which enhances the dramatic and sculptural quality of his subject. Bernhardt’s young god of war is captured as if issuing a cry of war, with long, flowing hair and a fantastical helmet surmounted by a chimaera-like cockerel, which some commentators interpreted as an allusion to the Gallic national emblem of the rooster. As such, the bust could be interpreted as an allegory of national resurgence. A strikingly imaginative and confidently modelled work, the Mars enfant is a testament to Bernhardt’s skill and inventiveness as a sculptor.

Born in Paris to a courtesan and an unknown father, Sarah Bernhardt received her first training as an actor at the Comédie-Française and, from 1866, developed a reputation on the stage at prestigious Parisian theatres. She soon found unprecedented fame across Europe and beyond, enjoying several worldwide tours during the 1880s and 1890s. Known in particular for her magisterial portrayals of tragic characters, Sarah Bernhardt’s legendary status continued into the early 20th century, when she starred in silent films and remained active on the stage until her death in 1923.

Bernhardt’s activity as a sculptor began in the 1870s with guidance from Roland Mathieu-Meusnier and Jules Franceschi. Taking a studio in 1873, she went on to model a number of highly accomplished works, many of which were exhibited at the Salon. Though she exhibited for many years, until the early 1900s, her most prolific period of sculptural activity was in the 1870s, when her employment at the Comédie-Française allowed her to devote time to working in the studio (see Mason, op. cit., p. 268). 

Bernhardt excelled particularly in the modelling of busts, for which she received acclaim from critics. In her 1907 memoirs, Bernhardt proudly speaks of friends and acquaintances sitting for her portrait busts in 1874 (My Double Life, pp. 256-257). At Bernhardt’s London exhibition of 1879, it is her busts that stand out among her works, with one reviewer writing, ‘the “star” of the Comédie Française is preferable in busts. All these are expressive and characteristic […]’ (The Illustrated London News, 21 June 1875, p. 583).

RELATED LITERATURE

My Double Life: Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt, London, 1907; M. E. Mason, Making Love/ Making Work: The Sculpture Practice of Sarah Bernhardt, doctoral thesis, The University of Leeds, May 2007, vol. II