Portrait of Antoine Vollon (1833-1900)

Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux was primarily celebrated as a sculptor — his Ugolino and La Danse are among the most powerful works of nineteenth-century French sculpture — but he was also a skilled painter who used the medium for studies and intimate subjects. This 1873 painted portrait of Antoine Vollon, the celebrated still-life painter, represents an unusual cross-genre encounter: one mid-century master depicting another. Carpeaux's portrait practice was direct and spontaneous, his sculptural training evident in his understanding of facial structure and three-dimensional form. The Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery holds this as an interesting document of the artistic friendship between two very different practitioners at the height of their careers.

Carpeaux brings his sculptor's understanding of facial volume and light to the painted portrait — the face is modeled with the three-dimensional assurance of a man accustomed to working in the round. The handling is direct and somewhat summary, capturing the essential character of the sitter with economical means rather than elaborate finish.