Carpeaux's 'Pourquoi naître esclave' on View at Galerie Nicolas Bourriaud

A rare terracotta version of Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux's 'Pourquoi naître esclave' (Why Be Born a Slave) is on display at Galerie Nicolas Bourriaud in Paris until July 31. The 1873 sculpture, a study for the monumental Fontaine de l'Observatoire commissioned by Baron Haussmann in 1867, depicts a bound African woman with a defiant expression. Carpeaux, a Prix de Rome winner (1854) from a working-class family, rejected neoclassicism for dynamic, emotional realism. The work's title is inscribed on its base. Critic Théophile Gautier praised the marble version at the 1869 Salon for its 'rare rigor' and 'dramatized ethnographic exactitude.' In the final fountain, the figure is unchained, reflecting the abolition of slavery in France (1848) and the US (1865). The exhibition includes about thirty Carpeaux sculptures in a studio-like setting. Art advisor Oliver Wootton notes the artist's personal identification with the subject's struggle.