Clay bust of Oscar Wilde, 1914. Numa Patlagean (1888—1961).
Oscar Wilde’s modeling career has been under discussion recently.
I refer, of course, to the art of sculpture, a subject that held a fascination for Oscar: he referenced it in his essays on art, and in his reviews of art galleries; he bought sculptures, commission sculptures, and even had his hair styled after a bust of Nero in the Louvre.
Oscar used say that he could only think in stories and correspondingly asserted that a sculptor thinks only in the raw material of his art. He told André Gide, “the sculptor doesn’t try to translate his thought into marble; he thinks in marble, directly”. 1 This thought echoes the symbolism of Oscar’s table talk about a man who thought only in bronze melting down the statue of eternal sadness that adorned his wife’s grave, and making of it a bronze homage to the joy which dwells only in the moment.
When Oscar Wilde was in America in 1882 he encouraged the work of two young sculptors.
One was John Donoghue whose story has recently been told with admirable thoroughness by Rob Marland in the January 2024 issue of The Wildean.2 Amongst many other related issues, Marland explores two pieces produced by Donoghue: a medallion of Wilde, and the fascinating fate of a bronze plaque depicting a seated girl along with a verse from Requiescat—Wilde’s memorial poem to his late sister, Isola.
The other artist was James Edward Kelly who made a sketch of Oscar Wilde, and from it a plaster or clay bas-relief of Wilde’s head which, until recently, was believed lost but whose whereabouts I shall explore in a forthcoming article.
Also related to Wilde sculptures, the friend and devotee of Wilde, Robert Sherard, essayed in 1915/1916 his third version of the Wilde story entitled The Real Oscar Wilde in which he says, “I am not aware that Oscar Wilde’s bust was ever executed, and it is a pity.” But then in a footnote immediately below he apparently contradicts himself: after referring to the Kelly bas-relief he adds: “A bust was evolved in Paris in 1914, by a Monsieur Patlagean.” (p. 336).
This allusion clearly needs to be rediscovered, and it brings me in a rather circular fashion to my subject.
Numa Patlagean
Numa Patlagean (1888 – 1961) was a somewhat radar-averse French-trained sculptor of Russian/Jewish extraction. For more about him see the Links below.
For our purposes, as Sherard attests, Patlagean created a clay bust of Oscar Wilde in 1914, and was typical of his modernist style. It is of interest because it is very rarely seen, in fact I do not believe a photograph of it has ever appeared online—until now. I feature it so that is better known, and because it is strikingly bold and human. It gives us a new Oscar.
I wonder if anyone knows where it is?
© John Cooper, 2024.
Footnotes:
- Recollections of Oscar Wilde. Ernest La Jeunesse, Andre Gide, Franz Blei. Translated by Percival Pollard. Published by John W. Luce & Company, Boston and London, 1906 ↩︎
- Journal of the Oscar Wilde Society. ↩︎
Links:
—Numa Patlagean article: The Union Bulletin, 1921.
—Numa Patlagean catalogue, Bourgeois Galleries, New York, 1929: Exhibition of Sculpture.
Oscar Wilde Blog 