Jacques Labatut

Exhibited by Galerie Nicolas Bourriaud

Material Original terracotta signed “Labatut”

Dimensions 12 ½ x 6 x 8 ¼ in

Place of Creation Paris

Status Vetted

About the Work

A highly acclaimed sculptor in his day, Jacques Labatut has since fallen somewhat into oblivion. Fortunately, the work of Geneviève Albinet, artist’s specialist, has enabled us to reconstruct the busy career of this sculptor from Toulouse, who won the Prix de Rome in 1881 with Tyrtée chantant ses Messéniennes parmi les Lacédémoniens. An advocate of his native south western France, he created his monumental sculpture La Garonne offrant l'électricité à la Ville de Toulouse, the full-length portrait of the Republican politician Pascal Duprat in Hagetmau, and L'Éloquence in the Monument des Girondins in Bordeaux. He was part of the group of “Toulousains” formed under the aegis of Falguière, the master of almost all of them: Mercié, Marqueste, Mengue, Rivière, Seysses and Ségoffin, who represent a significant trend of “fin de siècle” sculpture that, even in its apparent academicism, heralded a new conception of the art of sculpting.

But it was in Paris that he made his mark, both in the intimacy of the Salons of bourgeois society, through his talents as a portraitist, and in the prestigious urban decorative scheme of the 1900 Exposition Universelle, in the monumental La Musique in the Grand Palais. His Imprimerie (1892) in the entrance porch of the Bibliothèque nationale still welcomes visitors today.

The sculptor also excelled in historical subjects, as demonstrated by his masterly Caton d’Utique a youthful work of 1878 (marble H. 1.80 m) or his Enfant martyr, or again his Lévite important le corps de sa femme morte... Our hitherto unpublished Saint Jerome is included in Labatut's list of works under the heading “Saint Jérôme, terre cuite”. Very close in composition to a painting by Simone Contarini (1563-1633) in the Hôtel d'Assézat in Toulouse, Saint Jerome contemplating a skull here expresses meditative and spiritual thought of great intensity. As Madame Albinet put it in our conversation: “This is great Labatut!” This figure, modelled in clay and inward-looking, is able to convey all the tension in this meditation over a simple skull, purported to be the seat of the soul.

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