Famous for his sculptures of animals in a refined style, François Pompon's talent was only belatedly recognized with the undeniable success of his White Bear, which can be seen at Orsay Museum. Born into a family of cabinetmakers, the former apprentice marble cutter, who worked for Rodin, among others, gave his letters of nobility to animal sculpture to the point that, in his native region of Burgundy-Franche-Comté, a museum is dedicated to him.
Born in 1855, François Pompon was a committed craftsman before becoming a recognized artist. Initially a stonecutter, he attended evening classes at the School of Fine Arts before entering the National School of Decorative Arts and meeting the animal sculptor Pierre Louis Rouillard. The influence of this teacher will follow him all his life even if, during most of it, his animal sculptures met little or no commercial success.
After having been a carver for the greatest sculptors of the end of the 19th century (Antonin Mercié, Alexandre Falguière, Camille Claudel) and then Auguste Rodin's workshop manager, recognition finally came at the Salon d'Automne in 1922. When he exhibited his White Bear, a work representative of his unique style, he was already 67 years old and, until his death in 1933, he took advantage of this long-awaited financial independence to create the most important works of his life, which he bequeathed to the Dijon Museum.
Eliminating accessories and details to better translate volume and movement is his trademark. This search for purity is illustrated in particular by the absence of fur, claws or visible bones in these life-size sculptures that could be compared to the aesthetic treatment of a Brancusi.If the idea of representing them in real size was suggested to him by Bourdelle, his choice for the expressive simplification of the forms is certainly inspired by the Japanese aesthetics that were very much in vogue in the end of the 19th century.
Also nourished by Egyptian art, he lost interest in the human figure from 1906 onwards, taking as his models the domestic animals he saw in the summer in the countryside or, in winter, the wild and exotic species he could admire at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. Equipped with his portable workbench, Pompon made a first mold from clay which he then reworked in his studio.
I do the animal with almost all the falbalas, and then,
little by little, I eliminate so as to keep only what is essential.
Today, his works, which always go to the essence of things, can be seen at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, at La Piscine in Roubaix, at the Musée d'Orsay and in foreign collections in Belgium and the United States.
In his native town of Saulieu, the François-Pompon Museum also offers the opportunity to admire a bronze bear head similar to the one that opened the door of his Parisian studio.
A totem animal of the man who was awarded the Legion of Honor in 1925, the Bear in its majestic white version bears witness to the modernity of the sculptor and is, quite rightly, world famous and, at more than 100 years of age, still just as popular.
Valerie from Comme des Français
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