Sculptor and painter, born in Valenciennes, N France, the outstanding French sculptor of his time. After visiting Italy (1854) he returned to Paris (1862), where he produced his most famous works - a pediment for the Pavillon de Flore of the Louvre (1863) and La danse (1865) for the Paris Opéra façade, now in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris. He was awarded the Prix de Rome in 1854. Also a painter, his works can be seen in a museum in his native Valenciennes. He died of cancer.
Carpeaux won the Prix de Rome in 1854, and moving to Rome to find inspiration, he there studied the works of Michelangelo, Donatello and Verrocchio. Staying in Rome from 1854 to 1861, he obtained a taste for movement and spontaneity, which he joined with the great principles of baroque art.He never managed to finish his last work, the famous Fountain of the Four Parts of the Earth, on the Place Camille Jullian. He did finish the terrestrial globe, supported by the four figures of Asia, Europe, America and Africa, and it was Emmanuel Frémiet who completed the work by adding the eight leaping horses, the tortoises and the dolphins of the basin.
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