Works by this Artist
Ugolino and His SonsJean-Baptiste Carpeaux, 1863
Background
son of a lace-maker and a bricklayer
Studies
with François Rude and Joseph Duret at Ecole des Beaux-Arts (Paris); French Academy in Rome
Career
1854 – Hector Imploring the Gods to Save his Son Astanyax wins Prix de Rome (Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris); contributes regularly to Paris Salon
1862 – Napoleon III overturns rejection of Imperial France Bringing Enlightenment to the World and Protecting Science and Agriculture for Pavillon de Flore at the Louvre (in situ)
1864 –appointed drawing-master to Eugène-Louis-Jean-Joseph Bonaparte, Prince Imperial
1865 – The Dance commissioned for façade of Charles Garnier’s Opéra (Paris)
1869 – public opinion forces Garnier to remove Carpeaux’s The Dance from the Opéra on grounds of obscenity (later replaced)
1871-73 – exile in London after the fall of the Second Empire (1870)
Travels
Rome (1854-62); London (1871-73)
Commissions from
from: Napoleon III and Eugénie (Emperor and Empress of France)
Important Artworks
Fisherboy Listening to a Seashell, 1857 (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Valenciennes)
The Dance, 1866 (Paris Opéra; plaster in Musée d’Orsay, Paris)
Spirit of the Dance, 1873. Terracotta (Portland Art Museum, Oregon)
Web Resources
Readings:
Wagner, Anne. Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux: Sculptor of the Second Empire. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1986
Images
Carpeaux, La Danse, 1866 (Opéra, Paris)
Antoine Etex, Portrait of Delacroix, 1876 (Delacroix Museum, Paris)