Portrait of Bruno Chérier

This portrait depicts the painter Bruno Chérier (1818–1880), a friend of Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux and, like him, a native of Valenciennes. It is an original plaster cast made at the end of the artist’s life when he was ill in the painter’s house. The bronze version was enthusiastically received at the 1875 Salon, unlike the oil portrait of Carpeaux by Chérier, which was simultaneously rejected. The base of the bust bears the inscription ‘Souvenir fraternel offert à mon ami Bruno Chérier, peintre. Son compatriote: J.-B. Carpeaux, 1875’ [A brotherly souvenir offered to my friend, the painer Bruno Chérier. His fellow countryman: J.-B. Carpeaux, 1875].

Modelled spontaneously, the highly expressive bust, animated by a profound psychological quality, in which the critic of the time Castagnary recognised ‘physiognomy in action’, represents Chérier absorbed in himself, oblivious to the observer. The work is a bold reinterpretation of the Renaissance portrait and is one of the last testimonies to Carpeaux’s talent, whose virtuoso artistic expression found its chosen medium in portraiture.