Bust of a Lady (possibly Fanny Coleman) (1872): Art, History and Details

Bust of a Lady (possibly Fanny Coleman) (1872) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (French, 1827–1875).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Abandoning the strict frontality and symmetry of the neoclassical style, Carpeaux was instead inspired by French portrait busts of the 1600s and 1700s. This bust probably depicts Fanny Coleman, an English actress with whom Carpeaux may have had a romantic relationship. The turn of the head and the undulating drapery infuse the figure with a sense of drama. Patronized by Napoleon III, Carpeaux created the celebrated figural group La Danse for the facade of the Opera Garnier in Paris, a work renowned for its sensual nudes, but denounced by contemporaries as an affront to public decency.

Object facts

• Title: Bust of a Lady (possibly Fanny Coleman)
• Date: 1872
• Creator attribution: Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (French, 1827–1875)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: marble
• Dimensions: Overall: 83.2 x 58.5 x 39.4 cm (32 3/4 x 23 1/16 x 15 1/2 in.)
• Collection: Mod Euro - Sculpture 1800-1960
• Department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1975.5

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1975.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 63, no. 2 (February 1976): 31–71.
• Hawley, Henry H. “Carpeaux’s Mysterious Sculpture.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 63, no. 4 (April 1976): 99–107.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.