Joseph Carlier


Émile Nestor Joseph Carlier, called Joseph Carlier, was a French sculptor.

Biography

Early years

Émile Nestor Joseph Carlier was born in Cambrai on 3 January 1849.
His family house was in the Rue de la Prison, the current location of the town hall.
His father was a cutler and a musician in his spare time. He wanted to see his son become an architect or arts and crafts maker.
He was a student in the monks' school, then attended the Municipal School where he was taught drawing by the Bergers, father and son.
His father, fearing the uncertainty of the life of an artist, was uncomfortable with his son's career choice.
However, with the support of his mother he joined the studio of the ornamental sculptor Lecaron in Cambrai at the age of fifteen.
He began work carving the stones of the Cambrai cathedral. At one time he fell from a scaffold and was saved only by his bag's strap catching on a pole.
He went to Paris, visiting the Universal Exhibition of 1867, which confirmed his vocation as an artist.
Receiving no financial support from his parents, he had to support himself through minor jobs, and entered the house of a furniture manufacturer of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine.
Then he returned to Cambrai to follow a course of academic study in the workshop of René Fache, where he was a dedicated and studious pupil. His teacher convinced Carlier's parents to let him go to Paris to enter the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.
He received a scholarship from the city of Cambrai in 1869, and he joined the workshop of Pierre-Jules Cavelier.
His teacher gave him a rigorously academic education. The beginnings of the young Emile were difficult, with moments of euphoria followed by discouragement. The Franco-Prussian War of 1870 interrupted his studies. Exempt from military service, he went to his parents' home, and then joined the volunteers of Montrouge.
He had his baptism of fire at the advanced posts of Bagneux and at Buzenval in Rueil-Malmaison, where he saw the Orientalist painter Henri Regnault fall.
He himself received three shots and narrowly avoided the loss of his right arm. He saw the horrors of the Commune, and left in search of new horizons.
With a pistol and fifteen francs, he left for Spain, which he explored on foot for six months. On the way he worked for road masons.
Back in Paris he joined the workshop of François Jouffroy, then entered the Académie Julian in the workshop of Henri Chapu where he found his friend from Valenciennes, Léon Fagel.

Career

In 1874 he exhibited for the first time at the Salon, and exhibited there in all subsequent years.
As a token of gratitude, he donated his first major work to the city of Cambrai.
It was the stone statue of Cambrai chronicler Enguerrand de Monstrelet which he created in 1876 and was erected in a public garden.
In 1877, he erected a statue of the Resurrection on the tomb of his parents in the cemetery of Père Lachaise.
This work was a copy of a monument commissioned from him for a tomb in America.
He exhibited Gilliat Struggling with the Octopus, which earned him a second prize at the Salon of 1879, and Before the Stone Age, which earned him a scholarship to travel and visit Italy in 1881. In Florence he modeled the outline of The Blind and the Paralytic for which he was awarded the first medal of the Salon of 1883.
In 1885 he unsuccessfully sought a workshop at Garde-meuble or the quai de l'Alma for his sculpture work.
In 1886, he requested a grant of a block of marble, which was denied.
In 1888 he obtained a commission to make a work of sculpture for the decoration of the Industrial School of Roubaix or the Universal Exhibition of 1889, which did not happen.
In 1889 after winning his gold medal at the Exposition Universelle in Paris, he decided to transform his Gilliat, which he exhibited at the Salon of 1890. His work was purchased by the state for the Musée du Luxembourg. He became a member of the Jury of the Salon of French Artists, where he revised the regulations. That same year, his application for a work of sculpture was dismissed on the ground that in 1889 a statue had been bought at the Salon for the sum of 10,000 francs.
A new application in 1894 received the same answer.
At the end of the 19th century the city of Condé-sur-l'Escaut pre-selected him, as well as Léonie Duquesnoy and Jules Louis Mabille, to create the monument to the memory of actress Claire Josèphe Leris de Latude, a native of this town. In the end it was Henri Désiré Gauquié who did the work. He sculpted feminine grace with his masterpiece The Mirror, shown at the Exposition Universelle of 1900. This statue represented Chrysis from the novel by Pierre Louÿs. We do not know what action was taken on his application for a work of sculpture for the Universal Exposition of 1900, made in 1898.
In 1904 a subscription was launched worldwide for the realization of a great monument to Vilmorin, erected in 1908 in a square in Paris. This monument was in several pieces, three of which are now in the André Malraux Cultural Center of Verrières-le-Buisson: an allegory of agriculture and horticulture called Girl with Flowers and two others also in white marble. The second statue is located in the grounds of the Leon Maugé nursing home. It is missing the right wrist. The third, "Child Winnowing", signed and dated 1908, is in a small square at the corner of the Market passage and the Jean Simonin alley. The young child holds a wicker winnow in his hands. In 1908, after the showing of the monument to the Salon of French Artists, the author asked for it to be temporarily held in the Marble Depot.
In 1913 the Beaux Arts asked the artist to remove the monument. In 1917 he asked for instructions, and applied to place this monument to Vilmorin in a garden or a public place. The work was commissioned from the artist by a committee, so the state could not intervene in its disposal. This is probably the reason why the work was dismantled into several pieces.
He was called to Algiers in 1912 to reproduce the features of the Duc des Cars, General of the Conquest of 1830, and also make the medallion of General Maurice Bailloud, the successor to the previous conqueror, to create a bronze plaque placed on the 50-meter-high obelisk commemorating the dead of the Army of Africa, perched on the heights high on the Emperor Fort, inaugurated by the Governor General of Algeria Charles Lutaud, dated 21 October 1912, and destroyed by explosives for the safety of the inhabitants of Algiers in 1943.

Last years

When World War I broke out, he devoted himself assisting refugees from the North, and as president of the Friends of Cambrai, he devoted himself during the four years of conflict with his friend Devignes to help people of that town. In 1916, Senator Paul Bersez thanked the Minister of Fine Arts for the purchase of a work by the artist.
In 1918 Carlier asked of the Minister of Fine Arts the position of Inspector of Fine Arts, and informed him that the bronze statues placed in the garden of Cambrai had been removed by the Germans. For Condé-sur-l'Escaut, he made the statue of General Léon de Poilloüe de Saint-Mars, a French Major General. He collaborated with the architect Castex on a monumental fountain project for the city of Reims. Having never lost interest in his hometown, and being a member of several associations, he sat on the Committee for Reconstruction of Cambrai and participated in all the Parisian meetings that Cambrésiens attended.
He died in Paris on 11 April 1927. Upon his death, the funeral eulogy was spoken by the poet Devignes, A. Dorchain, the Mayor of Cambrai G. Desjardins. Fernand Créteur wrote his biography. He is buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery. After his death, during the distribution of works of the Musée du Luxembourg, it was recommended that the Gilliat marble be exhibited at the Louvre. The commission declined but offered the alternatives of the Natural History Museum or the Oceanographic Institute.
In 1932 his son made an unsuccessful application for the cast of The Blind and the Paralytic for the city of Cambrai to be repeated in bronze. He also asked what became the Monument aux Vilmorin. This request did not get any response.

Works

Undated