Jean Baptiste Carpeaux

Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux is known as an important sculptor of the Second Empire but he is also painter, etcher and draughtsman. He studies first at the École gratuite de dessin before joining the École des Beaux-Arts in 1844. For six years he trains with François Rude and than with Francisque Duret. Carpeaux obtains the Prix de Rome in 1854 but goes only to Italy in 1856, retained by his first commissions in Paris. While at the Villa Médicis, he studies the Renaissance masters and develops a taste for movement and spontaneity inspired by the Romans and their customs. It is in Rome where he executes his two first masterpieces: Le Pêcheur à la coquille and Ugolin.