Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (1827 - 1875), Jeune Pêcheur à la Coquille (Fisherboy with a shell)
Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (1827 - 1875), Jeune Pêcheur à la Coquille (Fisherboy with a shell)
signed: JB CARPEAUX. white marble. 59cm., 23¼in. Est. 8,000—12,000 GBP
NOTE: The Jeune Pêcheur à la Coquille epitomises Carpeaux's style and quickly became a symbol of his art, revised and repeated in many forms. From the sculpture's debut at the 1858 Salon, it was rightly seen as a masterful synthesis of contemporary and Renaissance influences: contemporary in its homage to Carpeaux's master, Franços Rude, whose Jeune Pêcheur à la Tortue was the yardstick by which his work was to be compared (see lot 7) - and Renaissance in its reflection of the influence of Donatello and Michelangelo whose oeuvres Carpeaux studied during his sojourn in Italy, where he was a pensionnaire at the Villa Medici.
After the exhibition of the initial plaster the Jeune Pêcheur was seen again in bronze at the Salon of 1859 and in marble the following year. During the next decade Carpeaux adapted his figure into a bust entitled Le Rieur Napolitain (lot 6) and later made the addition of the swathe of fishing net over the boy's thigh.
RELATED LITERATURE: Romantics to Rodin, pp. 145-6, no.29; Wagner, pp. 149-50; Poletti & Richarme (2003), p. 63
Sotheby's. 19th and 20th Century European Sculpture. 02 Jun 09. London www.sothebys.com