Born in New England, Paul Wayland Bartlett was sent to Paris at the age of nine because his father, sculptor and art critic Truman H. Bartlett, considered Paris the only place to get a proper artistic education. There the young Bartlett studied with the sculptors Emmanuel Frémiet and Auguste Rodin, and at the École des Beaux-Arts. Bartlett earned a reputation for his animal studies. When Bear Tamer, a bronze of a man standing over two cubs that won an honorable mention at the 1887 Salon, was exhibited in Chicago at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, it brought him his first artistic recognition in America. Although he lived most of his life in France, he became best known for his numerous monumental sculptural projects in America.

Boston-born Charles Sprague Pearce came to Paris in 1873, where his training included three years in the studio of famed portrait painter Léon Bonnat. Pearce's portrait of Bartlett, a reflection of their friendship, was exhibited in the 1890 Salon. In this depiction of a consummate gentleman, there is no sense of the dusty studio in which Bartlett practiced his craft as a sculptor.

Charles Sprague Pearce (1851-1914)
Oil on canvas, circa 1890
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Transfer from the National Museum of American Art; gift of Caroline Peter (Mrs. Armistead Peter III), 1958
NPG.65.20

Enlarged image

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