Marguerite Jeanne Carpentier

Some dates

1886 : birth of Marguerite Jeanne Carpentier with Paris.
1900-1902 : School of Beautiful arts of Paris.
1903 : Julian academy. Meet with Rodin . Marguerite Jeanne Carpentier integrates the group of the experts of Rodin.
1912 : she becomes member with life of the National company of Beautiful arts.
1913 : stay with the Médicis Villa.
Of 1918 at the end of the Thirties : young artists women whom the force of his talent attracts in its workshop of 4 rue de la Source with Auteuil, choose it for Master and form school.
1930 : beginning of the drafting of the Newspaper of artist of Marguerite Jeanne Carpentier.
1936-1965 : Marguerite Jeanne Carpentier occupies her last workshop to the 147 of the avenue of Villiers. She dies in 1965 . Its life will have proceeded entirely in Paris where it will have worked out a considerable work.
1966 : the workshop of Marguerite Jeanne Carpentier is dispersed on sale public by the Drouot Hotel.

A Flemish ascent: Glîmes

Self-portraits of M.J. Carpentier testify to the survival of his Flemish origins, like often does it his painting. Let us note in particular the Autoportrait with the dressing gown : modelled powerful of the flesh, the frayed strong hand and, clear eyes, high stature. With Fontainebleau, found in the first volume of “Louis XIV and his century” by Alexandre Dumas origins of my paternal family. the mother of my father was called Virginia de Glîmes . Here are for my titles of terrestrial nobility, but well another thing is the enchantment of the large gallery tested yesterday by a beautiful morning of spring this Thursday, May 8. As they are more alive than alive these artists of the Renaissance and of the beginning of the 17th century. As they are in the spirit of the adorable remainders of the ancient frescos, as they painted all in the form. Newspaper of artist of M.J.Carpentier

Saint-Simon in his Memories mentions Glîmes on several occasions, illustrates family of the nobility of the Netherlands, and the founder indicates some: … Jean, lord de Glymez , bastard of Jean II, duke of Lorraine, i.e. of the Brabant and legitimated by letter of August 27th, 1344 with Frankfurt of the Louis Emperor of Bavaria…
the Pleiad Volume III p. 656 Edition 1961

The paternal grandmother of Marguerite Jeanne Carpentier, Constancy Virginia de Glîmes born in 1806 in Saint Jose de Noode, suburb of Brussels, marries Charles Barthélémy Désiré Carpentier. She dies in Paris in 1868. His/her son Charles Auguste Barthélémy will have two children: Georges and Marguerite Jeanne, the downward last of this family in France.

The mother of Marguerite Jeanne Carpentier: Edith Perlstein

Normalienne, Edith Carpentier Perlstein directs a school which occurred of Wagram. It takes part in the creation of the the Alliance Fran1caise . She dies into 1914 of the continuations of a pleurisy. Marguerite Jeanne Carpentier stopped her stay with the Médicis Villa to come to look after it.

Many pages of its Newspaper testify to the great affection of Marguerite Jeanne Carpentier for her mother. … Là I remember a pastel made in full summer and which had rained so much with my poor Mom. I often have a rush of affection impassioned towards it and I felt that this feeling was reflected until in ether, flooded it of a superterrestrial emotion, of an amazing happiness and that my impatiences, my ingratitudes of newborn weighed more anything opposite this infinite jubilation. Newspaper

It evokes as the memory of her Perlstein grandmother, of her arrival in Paris by the diligence of Besancon and the walks as it made him make through the capital. Montmartre. That it is far from Montmartre that I knew with my small grandmother, because, after kilometers (one walked much at that time), we were going to sing Tantum ergo in the small church whose chorus was decorated of a spangled blue gold decoration which enchanted me. Then we went place of the Hillock (…), we sat down in front of the table out of wooden of a “Delicatessen” and we ate our cheese slices of bread of Italy with red wine glass. Large Paris extended in front of us, in the light. A calm commuter reigned on the old walls of the street Saint-Vincent and the house of Berlioz. Newspaper

Artistic formation

The School of the Art schools in 1900

Marguerite Jeanne Carpentier formed part, of 1900 to 1902, the first female promotions which integrated without restrictions - at least theoretically - the Ecole of the Art schools. It is, indeed, only into 1897 which cease officially discrimination between students and coeds and that is completed the history of long and difficult the emancipation of the women artists.

At that time, the School is always a universe misogynist :

the girl are treated in dilettantes who will have never to earn their living as artists and are relegated to the bottom of the classes;
professors, jury, critics and merchants of tables constitutes a male bastion kept good;
the concept of hierarchy of the kinds - unfavourable with the coeds - is always of rule:

initially comes the large sizes : subjects historical, mythological, religious, or allegorical which receive price and distinctions/purchases of the State. They are regarded by definition as “virile” subjects .
comes then: the portraits , landscapes, scenes of kind, natural dead , trompe-l'oeil - portraits and dead natures being famous prone of predilection for the women .

The Julian Academy. Rodin.

Marguerite Jeanne Carpentier will be, after Camille Claudel, the second woman sculptor to be worked among the group of the experts which surrounded Rodin .

It is Jean-Paul Laurens , Grand Cross of the Legion of honor, member of the Institute and director of the Académie Julian , which presents it to the Master.

Neighbor of Rodin to the workshops of the Deposit of the marbles, he is a large friend of this last, succeed the order of the Middle-class men of Calais supported it to make and was very early one of most faithful among the allies than Rodin counted with the Académie of the Art schools.

Marguerite Jeanne Carpentier leader

The young women artists who attend the workshop of Auteuil in the Twenties call Elise Rieuf, Charlotte Musson, Frederique Knoeri, Paule Peloux, Charasse, Lamourdedieu… They will be later painter, pastellist, illustrator or engraver.

Rodin has just died. The “band” of the experts - Jules Desbois, Jean Escoula, Charles Despiau, Bourdelle, Pompom, Van Rasbourg wire… - finds itself at Marguerite Jeanne Carpentier. One meets there Rosette Van Rasbourg , the goddaughter of Rodin, Loïe Fuller , the dancer with the veils which was its model, Isadora Duncan , of the musicians, the amateurs of Article.

For the young disciples of Marguerite Jeanne Carpentier environment is enivrante. They will not forget it any more. The bonds which will be created between them and their Master will resist the time and the jolts of its temperament cyclothymic and often violent, as this extract testifies some to a letter of Elects Rieuf: Carpentier was in such an originality of aspect and ways , always very correct, that it imposed some on all, even with those from which it differed completely. It struck by its strange air, of another time, sometimes of a tender freshness, almost naive, sometimes plunged in a dark silence in Beethoven. To tell the truth one felt it another world, but this world attracted at the most point; and it was never forgotten . It was feared, one tried to seize his mystery and one was full with admiration for his art, without including/understanding it. But it had terrible suppresseds anger and very quickly the things turned badly between it and its entourage .

The “newspaper of artist” of Marguerite Jeanne Carpentier

The Newspaper of Marguerite Jeanne Carpentier, written of 1930 to 1965, testifies to the multiform aspects of a powerful creation. It is an information source without equal studying its work, the undergone influences and the fights carried out to carry it out.

It is composed of twelve illustrated books of hundreds of drawings. One discovers with the sense line:

esthetic designs, pictorial techniques, preferred Masters
gestation of works, preparatory drawings, models
exposures, purchasers, summary lists of sold works, datings etc

This Newspaper should be continued as if ever it were not to be published, for only one confidential discharge system . There will be leitmotive which will return, of slags. It would be the work of a designer to prune these outgrowths and these repetitions in the middle of a tumultuous abundance , but it is neither my trade, nor my goal. My goal, if I have of them one in this life of multiform river which goes towards the unknown and evolves/moves unceasingly, my goal is the knowledge of oneself and Art . And precisely, these repetitions will help me in this research and I will formulate thus what haunts me . Newspaper

Broad topics of inspiration of Marguerite Jeanne Carpentier

Sculptures: “The hand of the last-maker. ”

One knows today a certain number of the sculptures of Marguerite Jeanne Carpentier which remade their appearance fifty years after his death, in sales, galleries, Internet sites or particular collections.

They are marbles, terra cotta, bronzes. Some were the subject of orders (in particular busts). Others of smaller dimensions (plasters or raw grounds) were used as preparatory studies for great groups like the Tomb of Puget carried out of 1950 to 1953.

The cooker of Marguerite Jeanne Carpentier was called Legendre. Its workshop was located at Montreuil. Bronzes were carried out by the house Knew in Arcueil Cachan. Found recently in a second-hand dealer of Nantes, the terra cotta bust of Jules Verne is gone back to 1921. It carries a number of exposure. One knows that Jules Verne was a large friend of Marcel Schwob and his wife Marguerite Moreno, themselves friendly of Rodin. Conscious enthusiasm, impassioned execution held in the iron hand of the last-maker , here is my temperament. I must work by volumes and the spot of light supported by accents, much more than by the effect. Rate/rhythm, burning rate/rhythm, rate/rhythm of flood, full rate/rhythm . Newspaper

The bust of Francoise Vernet-Hekking, ordered by her husband with Marguerite Jeanne Carpentier, date of 1958. Girl of Gerard Hekking, violoncellist with the Gebouw Concert, then professor with the Academy of Paris, Francoise Vernet-Hekking was pianist. Have just made an excellent meeting of sculpture - could affirm modelled in fair values. a burning conscience, it is perhaps the last word of art . Newspaper

Marguerite Cahun, partner of Marguerite Jeanne Carpentier at the School of Beautiful arts, remained her friend her life during. The cover of M. - J. Carpentier was always put street of Rennes where Marguerite Cahun and her sister Julie Hekking lived, pianist. At the bottom there is in me something of violent one and terrible to satisfy . It is what makes my force from the point of view of art and the danger from the point of view of the existence. Newspaper

Studies as that of Caliban show other sources of inspiration. Character of the Storm of Shakespeare, Caliban, gnome of an infernal mischievousness, was born from a witch and a demon. He incarnates the rough one obliged to obey a higher power and always revolts some against the capacity which dominates it. I arrived so that I sought obscurely: the type. The beauty preferred with the private individual and small modelled where Rodin excelled; moreover the small one modelled, for example in my model notched, the accents of the scapulas, can be registered in the great form which one can handle according to his will like Michel Ange and Delacroix, these so free geniuses - these nuances sing of as much better when they are incorporated in full volumes - and finally the research of the type and the beauty does not exclude the shiver from the flesh . Newspaper

Is the lack of money, which it calls “the nonsimilar sorrow”, the fights, its temperament of skinned sharp which makes sometimes the vacuum around it, incomprehension, all that which the face stinging of the mask translates “the closed eyes”? It is difficult for me to meet beings at my temperature . I trail with me an unbreakable dream of size in this time - pushed by the affection, the desire to leave my loneliness and a certain instinct defense, I want to attend people, to have pleasant knowledge if not friends, I promise myself to be careful, circumspect (…), but the old man always reappears with the first turning and the great dream which I carry burst, overflows, passes my contours, and it is then, without delaying, the danger, the bruise and, which there is of crueler still, the loneliness of the heart and the thought . Newspaper

The Naked ones: “Above all I am a voluptuous artist”

The naked ones painted by Marguerite Jeanne Carpentier proceed of same research as those which it carves: love of human form, volume, modelled in the light, imagination of type-setter.

For it professional models, his/her partners of workshop pose, his/her friends, his Laugier neighbor who directs a room of gymnastics where it will make sketches.

A “chest of woman”, who appeared in 1926 in an exposure to the Large palace with six other works of Marguerite Jeanne Carpentier, has just been sold with the biddings by the Gallery of Vuyst (Lokeren, Belgium). One year before, it had been bought with an auction with the Campo Gallery in Antwerp. Masters are so powerful only parce that they copy not with tons what is in front of them, but because they create what is in front of them or in them , by kneading it with the paste in the direction of the form, the form and the matter cherished by the light and supported by modelled, by the coloured values. Newspaper

One finds, in the Notebooks of drawing of Marguerite Jeanne Carpentier of many studies with the pencil, the feather or the blood one.

“Always the human body, the pivot of art, the great Art . Newspaper ”

Madeleine Fauriat, director from a designers house in Paris close to the Opera, was a customer and an assiduous visitor of the workshop. She hung, to support the sale of it, of the fabrics of Marguerite Jeanne Carpentier in her living rooms, at the time of her fashion shows.

Portraits: “The acutest analysis of a mask. ”

Portraits with oil, the pastel, the pencil, blood, orders, for the great compositions, portraits of friends: this part of the work of Marguerite Jeanne Carpentier is of an extreme richness.

But the artist did not make gifts. It flushed out, at its models, this truth “which is not always good to hear”. Some had evil to support it face to face. And yet - time having made its work - this truth is what makes works so interesting. While I paint, one strikes. It is the Vollat young person (…) in arm of shirt. Which color. It is admirable. I make an excellent sketch (…). That me requinque and drives out my cockroach, sweeps my doubts. As of its arrival it proposed to me to make the portrait of his/her mother-in-law who will come to pose tomorrow. ”

“Monday the 3rd. Fact the 1st meeting of the portrait according to Mrs. Lagay. Venue Miss Rebous which wishes that I do that of his niece . Newspaper

Victor Gilles, pianist famous in his time, was a friend of Marguerite Jeanne Carpentier. She carried out a bust of him in the Fifties. Borchart concert. Chopin, when he is not interpreted by a Gilles marrowy and full with charm, cries, rail over his piano, groans and often exasperates me by its lack of virility - but perhaps him only is gone down so far, so deeply in the pit of the pain - in the abyss of the highly-strung person - the black of the abyssal depths and their resonance in stone blows which fall into a well.

The music makes re-appear in me this fatal gift depth - since so long years the stone always goes down and makes resound the walls of the unsoundable well. Newspaper

M.J.Carpentier made many portraits, busts and studies of the family members of Leon Cahun, conservative in Mazarine and writer. In particular the portrait with the pencil of Palmyre Strauss, its wife.

Landscapes: “Allied observation with lyricism. ”

They are inspired with the artist by his long vagrancies through the capital or by its stays repeated in the area of Fontainebleau, Avon, Moret-sur-Loing, Saint Gratien… To treat the landscape like a composition with living beings. To study pieces in various lightings: form, your, matter . To draw the general form of the composition: spot, light and shade ; then to seek in this general provision the various elements. To put itself in front of nature only to study the pieces - but to do it with the most meticulous observation . Newspaper

The Lachaise Father. These large trees, these tombs, these monuments spread out in height, of old stones which are exhausted, the broken monuments with half crumbling on the side with their ballot boxes or their large crosses, moussus and blacks, the staircases côtoyant the walls covered with ivy and grass and against which lean the tombs in the shape of vaults, tightened ones against the others or the same ones bordering a road which goes down and for which the prospect, oddly curved, evokes the aspect of a strange village - then, with leaving this incredible evening of summer, the Small Rocket. Newspaper

O softness of these ciels covered opaque where shone a pale gleam silver plated in one perforated of exquisite gray . It fills up its full tonality the window which I see of my bed and my tables, my statuettes, my objects familiar receive a soft ray from it… Newspaper

Greens, the russet-red ones, rust, ochers, pale yellows very vibrating, here is the symbol of the tone in painting. Importance of the Tonality, glare, leitmotiv which is expensive to me . Newspaper

G., protective high bourgeoisies of arts, entrusted to artistic education their girls to Marguerite Jeanne Carpentier. They act towards it like enlightened patrons. Marguerite Jeanne Carpentier finds periodically, in their residence of Fontainebleau, a reception delicate and comforting: ring friends experts, readings, good expensive, long races in the forest . I tested in forest, in a complete loneliness, during three hours devoted to a painted study a marvellous enchantment (…). The noise of the insects, the song of the birds, the crackings, the wind in the trees, the odors intense and really enivrantes of all this exubérance vegetable in August, filled me of an animal and divine joy which made me include/understand all the fictions born of this giddiness: old mythologies, fairies, gnomes, etc; because it was a “surrounded” loneliness. To paint the forest it would be necessary (…) to accumulate documents of all kinds: rocks, rocks moussus, naked, wet, mottled lichens multicoloured, oddly carved, piled up ones on the others in combes full with ferns or hoisted on slopes and dominating of the falls; documents varied according to the hours of the day, lightings etc; gasolines of trees, ferns, heathers, grounds, grounds chaotic and sparkling wines formed by old beds of rivers, roofed-in areas of dead sheets and needles pine, others bleached by the thick sandstone powder - finally, having this full library, imbue of these mysterious forces, these aspects if varied, to compose of tables . Newspaper

The forests in the almost night shades, the rivers at the bottom of the valleys, broadsides of immense foliages, the thickness of the ciels, the superabundance of this enlightened vegetation of a hot and enveloping light, these yellow or russet-red pinks strongly coloured, finally this aspect of sculptural solidity had charmed me, I were in my environment there. Newspaper

Great compositions: “I wake up with the desire to make my philosopher's stones. ”

In first half of the XXe century, the fashion is with the great decorative compositions ordered to decorate the walls with the public monuments: town halls, museums and others let us panthéons. In Paris and in the surroundings of Paris, of rich person art lovers like to decorate their vast apartments or their residences in the countryside of large decorative fabrics.

Thus Marguerite Jeanne Carpentier will carry out, inter alia, an order of three panels for the living room of music of the castle of Mr. and Mrs. Lefèvre in Brie-Count-Robert . The first (2m50x3m30) described an exuberant festival of the wine; the second (2m50x2m05) dionysiaque dance of two bacchantes in a marble palate. As for the third, it was painted with fresco directly on the wall.

A Silène (1m12x1m40) is ordered to him about 1925 per Alfred Meige, president of the Trade union of the Contractors, for his apartment of the park Monceau .

Some of its compositions are the fruit of its poetic or philosophical visions, such “Modern times” (1m04x1m29). This fabric, carried out during the Second world war in a ground camaieu which underlines the dramatic aspect of it, was presented to the Palate of Tokyo in May 1949, at the time of the exposure “the Drawing” organized by the National company of the Art schools. On the general smear a powerful piece of Modern times paints. Newspaper I turn over my table in the train. I did all the same what I wanted of the principal group, in spite of this too liquid white which obstructed me in the execution. the great form initially and modelled significant the . It - with at the bottom of the gleams of fire - will be painted with solid tonalities and a light blafarde on the bodies. Newspaper I send to the Living room three fabrics: Modern times, the Attack, Bathers in a landscape of dream. Newspaper

Dead natures: “All things beautiful and attaching to return. ”

The Newspaper of Marguerite Jeanne Carpentier mentions a considerable number of dead nature bought with its workshop: fruits, flowers, fish. Those which we know, very few unfortunately, are treated in full paste, in a furia of colors where the life flows. In its great compositions, they accompany the decoration where the characters evolve/move. The yellow, the orange vibrate intensely in the light - it would be necessary to combine incredible sonorities, with the reflection of the sun in the kitchen, on the potteries and coppers mordoré very deep; orange, full ranges and luisantes, white hardly gilded, bursting of light, the creams compact, chopped blue powerful and hot ones, with major shades, purplished, gray funds bluish and gray heat of second plan on the cloths - a procession splendid, in a heat light, so assembled tone and paroxystic in plenitude . Newspaper

Work engraved: “I am in the skin of an old philosopher who will go in Paris. ”

The greatest part of the work engraved of Marguerite Jeanne Carpentier is carried out in the Thirties. In 1928 it signs a first album of twelve lithographies entitled “Old Corners of Paris” . Two years later, it engraves twenty two etchings on the same topic.

These two albums, as well as a series of lithographies (small trades, scenes of cabarets, tramps Parisian) entered to the Cabinet of the Prints on August 6th, 1941 under the number D 05057 Sad day. drew deadened tramp named Prosper . (…) I arrive at the door Saint Denis. Perhaps spirits, the gasoline of the pieces with which my heart was manufactured, attract me in this Paris, truth, because I sit at table with a small coffee and draws a newsagent . On a robust framework of quinquagénaire, it carries all the marks of the forfeiture. Two double and major grins, extraordinary, a large falling nose, the dull and malevolent eye, the emaciated shoulder on which models the jacket of a pisseux green. One still feels the bicepses and the knotty hands are strong. Newspaper

The reasoned catalog

The Catalog reasoned of the work of Marguerite Jeanne Carpentier is under development. To date more than four hundred works is already indexed there .

Each card was indicated in the most exhaustive way: photographs work, dating, dimensions, technique, history of the successive owners, information on the model each time that was possible. The Newspaper of Marguerite Jeanne Carpentier provided the authors of this work, which one knows the importance as regards authenticity, many evidence.

However, the attested richness of the work of Marguerite Jeanne Carpentier makes that it is difficult to determine the extent of it. An important part is still to discover, captive confidentiality of private collections. The reasoned Catalog thus remains open. Research continues.

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