Plaster Bust Of Charles Garnier By J-b Carpeaux, 19th Century

Bust of the architect Charles Garnier after Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, patinated plaster in imitation of bronze. Bears the stamp of Achille Colas and the Barbedienne Fondeur signature.
In 1867, Carpeaux modeled the bust of Charles Garnier in a makeshift workshop set up in the attic of the Opera. It was exhibited in bronze at the Salon of 1869. The plaster original is kept at the Petit Palais in Paris.
Good general condition, small restorations.
The bronze bust is displayed on the ground floor of the Paris Opera. (A slightly larger copy oil plaster was sold at Sotheby's in London in 1998 for the sum of €10,000 and another in 2021 in Lille for the sum of €3,500 and bearing the same inscriptions).

Charles Garnier (1825-1898) studied architecture before winning the Grand Prix de Rome in 1848. Having become an architect for the City of Paris, he was named winner of the competition for the construction of a new opera house in 1860. Work on the building, in an opulent Baroque style, lasted about fifteen years. This masterpiece, to which we give its name, was inaugurated in 1875. Garnier then continued his career as an architect by creating numerous buildings, including the casino and the Monte-Carlo opera, the Marigny Theater and even The Nice Astronomical Observatory, created in collaboration with Gustave Eiffel.

Famous sculptor of the Second Empire (1852-1870), Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (1827-1875) had a career as brilliant as it was brief, closely linked to the reign of Napoleon III. Trained at the end of Romanticism, marked by Géricault and Delacroix, Carpeaux combines in his works a realism and an expressiveness which renews the sculpture of the 19th century. The one we know as "the sculptor of the smile" invented a style imbued with movement and life. The artist is keen to impose his work and, from Ugolin to La Danse, to prove his talent. An attentive observer, he left parallel, in his paintings, a testimony full of sensitivity and truth of life at the imperial court as well as of the streets of Paris under the Commune.