French sculptor. A student of Armand Toussaint at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, in 1850 he received the Prix de RomeGLOSSARYA scholarship, founded concurrently with the French Academy in Rome (1666), that enabled prize-winning students at the Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris to spend a period (usually 4 years) in Rome at the state's expense. Prizes for architecture began to be awarded regularly in 1723, and prizes for engravers and musicians were added in the 19th century. The prizes were meant to perpetuate the academic tradition and during the 18th and 19th centuries winning the award was the traditional stepping stone to the highest honours for painters and sculptors. Many distinguished artists (as well as many nonentities) were Prix de Rome winners, notably David, Fragonard, and Ingres among painters and Clodion, Girardon, and Houdon among sculptors. The prizes are still awarded and the system has been adopted by other countries., the sine qua non for an official career as a French sculptor. He became a prominent sculptor of the Second Empire, who was awarded the Legion d'Honneur, 29 June 1867.
When, on the morning of 29 August 1869 it was discovered that inkGLOSSARYColoured fluid used for writing, drawing, or printing. Inks usually have staining power without body, but printers' inks are pigments mixed with oil and varnish, and are opaque. The use of inks goes back in China and Egypt to at least 2500 BC. They were usually made from lampblack (a pigment made from soot) or a red ochre ground into a solution of glue or gums. These materials were moulded into dry sticks or blocks, which were then mixed with water for use. Ink brought from China or Japan in such dry form came to be known in the West as 'Chinese ink' or 'Indian ink'. The names are also given to a similar preparation made in Europe. had been thrown over Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux's marbleGLOSSARYloosely applied to any hard limestone that can be sawn into thin slabs and will take a good polish so that it is suitable for decorative work; more strictly, it refers to metamorphosed limestones whose structure has been recrystallized by heat or pressure. Marbles are widely disseminated and occur in a great variety of colours and patterns, but certain types have been particularly prized by sculptors. The most famous of Greek white marbles in the ancient world was the close-grained Pentelic, which was quarried at Mount Pentelicon in Attica. The Elgin Marbles are carved in Pentelic. Widely used also were the somewhat coarser-grained translucent white marbles from the Aegean islands of Paros and Naxos. Parian marble was used for the celebrated Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. The pure white Carrara marble, quarried at Massa, Carrara, and Pietra Santa in Tuscany from the 3rd century BC, is the most famous of all sculptors' stones. It was used for the Apollo Belvedere, and was much favoured in the Renaissance, particularly by Michelangelo, who often visited the quarries to select material for his work. Neoclassical sculptors also favoured Carrara marble because of its ability to take a smooth, sleek surface, but it can look rather 'dead' compared with some of the finest Greek marbles. La Danse in the façadeGLOSSARYthe front or principal face of a building, especially one elaborately constructed; a blind façade is a façade that is purely decorative and does not relate to the structure of the building. of the Opéra Garnier, it was thought to have been a scandalized gesture by a member of the public because of the nudity of Carpeaux's figures. Charles Garnier, who had already commissioned from Gumery two gilded groups for the corniceGLOSSARYa molded horizontal ledge along the top of a building or wall; a decorative molding between wall and roof. of the Palais Garnier, asked Gumery to sculpt a replacement figure of La Danse to replace the disfigured Carpeaux group. With the Franco-Prussian War of the following year, followed by the Paris Commune, during which Gumery died in Paris under obscure circumstances during the privations of the Siege of Paris, when many starved, and then the death of Carpeaux in 1875, the scandal was forgotten: the Carpeaux group remained in place and Gumery's La Danse is conserved in the Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Angers.
