“Sculpture is life, life is movement and it is here [in the street] that you will learn how to render it. Impress in your mind the physiognomies, the appearances, the gestures of all those people there, watch them going, running, playing, arguing, fighting. And, back in the studio, close your eyes, recall their attitudes, fix them in a drawing or in a clay sketch. Models in the academy are all stiff: they cannot teach us the exact structures of bodies: it is in the street that we must study our art, not in the Vatican." [1]
When Carpeaux arrived at the French Academy in Rome in 1856, he was expected to prove his artistic growth by sending a midterm envoi (an example of his progress) to Paris. He did so spectacularly by sending his plaster model of what would become his undeniable masterwork, Le Pêcheur à la Coquille (Fisherboy with Shell). The original plaster of Le Pêcheur was exhibited at the Ecole des Beaux-Artes in Paris in 1858 and caused a significant stir among critics because of its departure from the traditional, idealized academic styles of the t.mes . Carpeaux presented a lively, naturalistic depiction of a boy, which was seen as a challenge to established artistic norms. The critical attention this work received helped launch Carpeaux into prominence as a major artist of the 19th century. At once a tribute to his teachers François Rude and Francisque Duret—who had long explored the expressive possibilities of nude fisherboys inspired by the popular image of cheerful Neapolitan life—the work stood out for its freshness and vitality. Celebrated for its Romantic realism, Fisherboy dazzled viewers with its confident modeling of the human body and its keen attention to natural detail. Its triumph at the Paris exhibition was ultimately so decisive that, three years later, Carpeaux created a companion piece, La Jeune Fille à la Coquille (Girl with Seashell), extending the success of the original into a harmonious pair.
"Your little Roman boy listening to the murmur of a seashell has been like a battlefield for the critics. The stir that the work created suddenly placed you, an unknown just the day before, among the artists who are destined to leave their mark on the 19th century..."
Carpeaux first showed the marble version of his Pêcheur at the Salon of 1863. The plaster version of La Jeune Fille à la Coquille was shown at the Salon of 1864 and the marble version was presented in 1867, to form a pair with its male counterpart.
Napoleon III discreetly acquired the first marble version of the Fisherboy from Carpeaux in 1863. A few years later Empress Eugénie acquired the marble La Jeune Fille à la Coquille, placing both sculptures together in the Tuileries Palace. In 1867 they were shown at the Exposition Universelle, with their prestigious French imperial ownership revealed in the catalogue (this first pair in marble are now in the National Gallery, Washington, inv. nos A64 & A65).
The subject of Le Pêcheur, described by Carpeaux as "taken from nature... a laughing fisherboy aged eleven listening to the echo of a shell," also alludes to English Romantic literature and writers like William Wordsworth and Walter Savage Lander, who describe children listening to the sound of a seashell to determine the arrival of the tide. Le Pêcheur and La Jeune Fille à la Coquille are somet.mes s interpreted as allegories of Sight and Hearing.
Carpeaux planned a bronze edition of the Le Pêcheur as early as 1859, initially nude and in a large size, and in 1863 a reduced version with the addition of a fishing net. Four life-size plaster versions of Le Pêcheur à la Coquille exist, including the one used to help prepare the final version, signed and dated 1858, now in the Petit Palais in Paris. The State promised to subsidize the cost of a marble block for subsequent marble figures of this masterfully executed pair.
It was in 1873, two years before his death, that Carpeaux chose to return to these models and carve the present life-size pair. The sculptures are meticulously rendered, capturing the figures’ supple musculature and living flesh, the buoyant, articulated locks of their hair, and their mirthful, animated expressions. Another pair, signed and dated 1874, is known to have existed but has since been lost.
On December 21, 1873, a significant auction of works by Carpeaux was held at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris. This sale was part of the artist’s strategy to market his work directly to the public.
Exceptionally, and uniquely, Carpeaux commissioned a pair of extraordinary oak pedestals, richly adorned with volutes and flowers, also signed and dated 1873, to enhance this pair of marbles and present them at his 1873 atelier sale, where they were described under numbers 1 and 2:
"Marbles – statues No. 1 Child with a seashell. Height 90 cm. Carved
wooden base"
No. 2 Young girl with a seashell. Height 90 cm. Carved wooden base."
Le Pêcheur and La Jeune Fille are without a doubt two of Carpeaux’s greatest masterpieces and proved to be professional triumphs for the artist.
1J. D. Draper et. al., 2014.