Carpeaux's vision for Napoleon III: mourning the death of an emperor

Apollo, Nov, 2003 by Alison McQueen

In January 1873, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux received an urgent telegram dispatched from England by the Prince Imperial Louis-Napoleon, the only son of Napoleon III and Eugenie, the ex-emperor and ex-empress of France. Louis asked Carpeaux to return to England from Paris immediately to complete the bust of Napoleon he had begun the previous year. (1) Louis-Napoleon reported that his father, who had been undergoing repeated surgery for kidney stones, appeared close to death. In the event, Carpeaux arrived only in time to execute postmortem drawings of Napoleon III, who had been among the artist's most important patrons, and then attended and sketched the funeral service. The Bust of Napoleon III (Fig. 1), which Carpeaux completed in London in 1874 and promptly delivered to Eugenie, was one of his greatest achievements. (2) A psychologically penetrating and sensitive rendering of the fallen emperor, this sculpture is the most successful of the many portraits of Napoleon III, a public figure whose likeness and character numerous artists had struggled to capture. Several unpublished and little examined drawings by Carpeaux reveal, however, that this bust was only a small part of a much grander monument he had planned to create in honour of France's last emperor.

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During the Second Empire (1852-70), Carpeaux was one of the favoured sculptors of both the emperor and empress. His relationship with the emperor began in 1852 when Napoleon commissioned a marble relief, now in the Musee des Beaux-Arts at Valenciennes, representing The emperor receiving Abd el-Kader at the Palace of St-Cloud (1852-53), commemorating the occasion on 30 October 1852 when Napoleon received the Arab leader to whom he granted freedom following five years of imprisonment at Amboise in the Loire valley. After Napoleon's marriage to his Spanish bride Eugenie (Eugenie de Palafox, Countess of Teba) in January 1853, Carpeaux endeavoured to attract further imperial patronage with various plaster casts for monuments presenting the new empress as a guardian of children and the poor, and equally as a protector of the arts. While his maquettes accurately captured the empress's efforts to establish her role as a charitable benefactor during the early years of the Second Empire, Eugenie did not pursue any of Carpeaux's complimentary proposals. Carpeaux was, however, favoured with the most lucrative commissions of his career between 1865 and 1867, when he executed busts and full-length portraits of the imperial heir, Louis-Napoleon, who was born in 1856. Carpeaux developed an even closer relationship with the Imperial family following the birth of the Prince Imperial. One of his drawings, Promenade on the terrace of the Orangerie des Tuileries (Fig. 2), shows Napoleon III from behind supporting his son, who balances on a chair, as both look out over the palace's gardens; such a work testifies to the unusual familiarity Carpeaux then enjoyed with the most powerful figures of state in France. Both Carpeaux's Bust of the Prince Imperial of 1865-66 (Chateau de Compiegne) and his full-length portrait of the Prince Imperial and his dog Nero of 1867 (Musee d'Orsay, Paris) were produced in full- and reduced-scale editions in Sevres biscuit and bronze. Carpeaux retained the lucrative rights over the reproduction of the works both in the form of photography and sculpture. (3) In 1866, Eugenie commissioned her own portrait bust, of which Carpeaux produced two marble and four plaster versions (including one in the Musee des Beaux-Arts, Valenciennes).

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At the time of the fall of the Second Empire in 1870 and the beginning of the imperial family's exile in England, Carpeaux had completed individual portraits of Napoleon III's wife and son, but not of the emperor himself. When Carpeaux travelled to England in 1871 to pay his respects to the family, who were then living at Chislehurst, a small town south east of London, they asked him to sculpt a bust of Napoleon. He began work on the bust in 1872, but following Napoleon's death on 9 January 1873, Carpeaux envisioned a more elaborate commemorative monument. He appears to have begun his preparatory studies for this monument purely on his own initiative; there is no evidence that Eugenie initiated a formal commission. Nevertheless, Carpeaux invested significant time and energy into formulating his ideas for a sepulchral sculpture.

While Napoleon lay in state at St Mary's, the small Catholic parish church in Chislehurst, Carpeaux was among the thousands who descended on the town and queued to pay their respects. In two highly finished pencil drawings heightened with white (Figs. 3 and 4), Carpeaux captured a serene Napoleon dressed in military uniform, decorated with the cross of the Legion d'honneur, and laid out in an open coffin. Testifying to his presence at St Mary's during the days leading up to the funeral, Carpeaux signed one of the drawings ['JB.sup.ste] Carpeaux/Chislehurst/13 Janvier 1873'. Carpeaux also created a more macabre effect with a quickly-rendered drawing--probably executed on the day of the funeral--that evokes the overwrought setting of the ceremony (Fig. 5). He sketched a priest stationed next to the coffin surrounded by numerous wreaths and candelabra. Below a study of Napoleon's crossed hands, which captures his attenuated fingers holding a handkerchief, Carpeaux even sketched out the dimensions he thought suited a full length effigy of Napoleon above his tomb (Fig. 6). (4) From his temporary base at a studio in London, Carpeaux sought inspiration from the city's numerous historically significant tombs. Not surprisingly, this included a visit to Westminster Abbey from which one of two extant sketches captures Carpeaux's interest in the Abbey's tombs. Carpeaux titled the more detailed drawing of the two 'Henri I Fondateur d'Abbey Westminster' (Fig. 7) and also wrote on the drawing, 'Recherche pour le monument de Napoleon III. (5) His drawing depicted, in fact, not the tomb of Henry I, but rather that of Henry III (1207-72) as it can still be seen from the high altar. With its double-sarcophagus form, sculpted niches and bas-relief decoration, Henry III's tomb is much more elaborate than the other royal tombs in Westminster Abbey, and understandably attracted Carpeaux's attention. Despite all of Carpeaux's efforts, however, his plans never resulted in a commission. It was, probably, Queen Victoria's generous gift to Eugenie of a Scottish granite sarcophagus for Napoleon that brought to an end Carpeaux's aspirations to sculpt a tomb as grand as those of the kings of England.