Numa Patlagean

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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, commissioned 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 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.

Also related to Wilde sculptures, the friend and devotee of Wilde, Robert Sherard, released in 1915/1916 his third version of the Wilde story titled 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 he adds: “A bust was evolved in Paris in 1914, by a Monsieur Patlagean.” (p. 336).

Numa Patlagean

Numa Patlagean (1888 – 1961) was a somewhat radar-averse French-trained sculptor of Russian/Jewish extraction. (See the Links below).

Patlagean created a clay bust of Oscar Wilde in 1914 in his typical modernist style.

It is of interest because it is very rarely seen. I do not believe a photograph of it has ever appeared online—until now (above). It is strikingly bold and human and gives us a new Oscar.

I wonder if anyone knows where it is?

© John Cooper, 2024.

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Footnotes:

1. 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 ↩︎
2. Journal of the Oscar Wilde Society. ↩︎

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Links:

—Numa Patlagean article: The Union Bulletin, 1921.

—Numa Patlagean catalogue, Bourgeois Galleries, New York, 1929: Exhibition of Sculpture.

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