(c) 2019 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Jane Poupelet

Saint-Paul-Lizonne, France, 1874 - 1932, Paris

BiographyFrench sculptress.

Trained in artistic circles still largely closed to women, Jane Poupelet attended ground-breaking courses at the Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux, then studied briefly at the more conservative Académie Julian in Paris, before refining her style under the direction of the sculptor Lucien Schnegg. She began her career under the male pseudonym Simon de la Vergne (1899–1901). She initially produced single copies of small figures that she plunged in bronze but chased and patinated herself—at the time an uncommon practice. Her best-known works today are her female nudes. With full, sensual forms (she rebelled against the damaging effects of the corset), her figures are simply posed but of accurate and precise anatomical structure and with an austere charm that accords with her admiration for the ancient statuary in Naples and the recommendations of Lucien Schnegg to return to the Greek axiom of “architectural cadences”, i.e. the basing of the proportions of the human body on the proportions of architecture. An example is her Femme à sa toilette (Woman at Bath Time, 1907–10).

From https://awarewomenartists.com/en/artiste/jane-poupelet/ accessed 16 June 2019 M Phelps

Person TypeIndividual

Last Updated8/7/24

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