Description
The writer and Carpeaux had been close friends since they had met in Rome in 1861, while Carpeaux was staying at the Villa Médicis. Dumas was the sculptor’s best man at his marriage to Amélie de Montfort in 1869, then godfather to his son Charles and finally his executor. The portrait of Dumas was created in 1873 with that of his wife as a pendant. The original plaster casts, patinated in the colour of terracotta, are now in the Musée d’Orsay, while the marble Dumas, exhibited at the 1874 Salon (no. 2727), was bequeathed to the Comédie Française, where it remains to this day.
Alexandre Dumas fils – son of the famous author of “The Three Musketeers” – was one of the leading playwrights of his time. He became famous in 1848 with his novel « La Dame aux Camélias » and even more so in 1851 thanks to the play that was drawn from it. Declared the illegitimate child of unknown father and mother, he was officially recognized by his father on March 17, 1831, when he was seven years old. He wrote numerous plays aiming to paint a realistic picture of contemporary society, and exploring the problems that troubled the bourgeois world of the second half of the 19th century (the status of women, marriage, money, corruption, etc.). An admirer and close friend of Georges Sand, he was elected to the Académie française in 1874, filling the seat vacated by his father.
The model was produced in terracotta by the studio as early as 1873, then posthumously by the family after 1875. The Carpeaux sale of 1894 mentions a terracotta. It was similarly produced in bronze in three sizes (0.82; 0.66; 0.47).
