Marguerite Carpentier

Marguerite Carpentier was a French painter, sculptor, draftsman, and graphic artist. At the beginning of the 20th century she founded the first painting school for females. She studied at the École des Beaux Arts at Paris from 1903–09, where she met the famous sculptor Auguste Rodin. She was the first woman to win the Prix de Roma, which came with a one year’s residence in Italy. In 1915 she opened a studio in Paris, where she also taught a number of important artists. She created a stylistically homogeneous but unmistakable oeuvre in marble, clay, plaster, and bronze.

Carpentier became famous for a beautifully written artist’s diary (1930-65), illustrated with hundreds of drawings, which was a valuable source of information about her pictorial research, the genesis of her work, her thoughts, her readings, her buyers and the vicissitudes of her life. Marguerite was also called Il Vecchio (The old lady). In the 1920s, her studio was close to a boxing school, where she had the opportunity for detailed studies. The Athlète au repos (Athlete at rest) is a bronze figure in the size 40 x 47 cm. Her elder brother George (1877-1929) was an actor in the ensemble of Georges Pitoëff, while her mother Edith Carroll Perlstein (? -1914) was a painter.