1. JEAN BAPTISTE CARPEAUX (1827-1875) By: Kimberly Hagans

2. EARLY LIFE  Carpeaux was from the working class. Son and grandson of stonemasons in Valenciennes, he was apprenticed as a boy to Debaisieux, a plasterer. Since drawing was a necessary tool of his trade, Carpeaux was enrolled in the Académie de Peinture, Sculpture et Architecture in Valenciennes, and, after his family's relocation to Paris in 1838, at the École Gratuite de Dessin (or Petite École) until 1843  Carpeaux was trained both by the controversial modèle estampe method of copying prints after master drawings and by copying eighteenth-century sculpture. A shift in the school's curriculum under the leadership of Hilaire Belloc in 1831 brought fresh sculpture courses, which perhaps influenced Carpeaux's interest in the profession.

3. LIFE AS A SCULPTOR  During training at the École des Beaux-Arts, Carpeaux additionally studied with Romantic sculptor François Rude. In 1850, he abandoned Rude's studio for that of Francisque Duret, a teacher at the school under whose tutelage Carpeaux achieved an honorable mention for his Achilles Wounded in the Heel (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Valenciennes) in the Prix de Rome competition the same year. This was followed by a second place for his figure Philoctetes on Lemnos. In 1854, he won the Grand Prix de Rome for his group Hector and His Son Astyanax (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Valenciennes).  Many drawings from his study in Rome show that Carpeaux sketched his surroundings constantly. He was especially receptive to the works of Michelangelo, whose gestural poses he observed carefully and incorporated into his own design for a fifth-year assignment. The resulting multifigural plaster group, Ugolino and His Sons, renders a scene from Dante's Divine Comedy in which the Pisan Count Ugolino della Gherardesca and his sons are punished by starvation.

4. LIFE AS A SCULPTOR (CONTD.)  The success of Ugolino and His Sons immediately brought Carpeaux important commissions, including a portrait of the nine-year-old Prince Impérial, son of Napoleon III, the relief decoration for the Pavilion of Flora at the Tuilieries (1864), the sculptural group The Dance for the facade of Charles Garnier's newly completed Opéra (1865),the Four Parts of the World Sustaining the Globe for the fountain of the Observatory in the gardens of the Luxembourg Palace (1867),and a monument to the painter Antoine Watteau.

5. CARPEAUX’S WORKS The first sculpture is the famous Ugolino and His Sons. Carpeaux's visionary composition reflects his reverence for Michelangelo, as well as his own painstaking concern with anatomical realism. Ugolino and His Sons was completed in plaster in 1861, the last year of his residence at the French Academy in Rome. A sensation in Rome, it brought Carpeaux many commissions. Upon his return to France, Ugolino was cast in bronze at the order of the French Ministry of Fine Arts and exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1863. Later it was moved to the gardens of the Tuilieries, where it was displayed as a pendant to a bronze of the Laocoön. This marble version was executed by the practitioner Bernard under Carpeaux's supervision and completed in time for the Universal Exposition at Paris in 1867. The date inscribed on the marble refers to the original plaster model's completion.

6. The second sculpture is The Prince Impérial with His Dog Néro. After an unsuccessful effort in 1864 to win a commission for a portrait of Empress Eugénie, Carpeaux proposed to the imperial couple a portrait of their son, Eugène-Louis-Jean-Joseph Napoléon, the Prince Impérial (1856–1879). By August 1865, a lifesize portrait of the nine-year-old prince was complete and the plaster was soon shown publicly at the Salon of 1866. The standing portrait was also executed in marble and cast in silver-patinated bronze, exhibited at the Salons of 1867 and 1868 respectively. Carpeaux chose to portray the prince as a bourgeois lad, shown with the emperor's dog Néro, a gift from the Russian ambassador.

7. The third sculpture is the Bust of Napoleon III. Begun in 1872, this portrait of Napoleon III was not completed until after the fallen emperor's death on January 9, 1873. Summoned to England in early January by the Prince Impérial, the son of Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie, Carpeaux arrived in time only to attend and sketch the funeral services at Saint Mary's Catholic Church in Chiselhurst. The resulting likeness captures the emperor's saddened mood, preoccupied as he was by his defeat by the Prussians at Sedan in 1870 and his subsequent exile and ill health. Empress Eugénie cherished the bust for nearly fifty years until her death in 1920.

8. This last sculpture is The Genius of the Dance. Soon after the 1869 unveiling of his controversial figural group La Danse, which embellished the facade of Charles Garnier's Paris Opéra, Carpeaux began to capitalize on the group by extracting busts, individual figures, and groups of figures to be issued for sale. Pressed for funds, he created reductions such as this for sale to collectors. This Genius is a bronze founder's model designed to be taken apart in the places indicated by joints held together by pins. The separate parts were molded and cast, then joined by hand, the projecting flanges being left so that the extra metal would permit more nearly invisible joining of the seams in the subsequent edition.

9. MY SCULPTURE: WORK IN PROGRESS

10. MY SCULPTURE: FINISHED WORK

11.  I decided to make this sculpture because I was inspired with how Carpeaux added so much emotion into his artwork. This one sculpture was inspired by his famous sculpture Ugolino and His Sons. Mostly because of Ugolino’s ugly face and because both sculptures look angry.