essential
Geneviève Albinet, Art historian, highlights the Toulouse sculptor Jacques Labatut, unjustly overlooked despite an eclectic work visible in several major cities, including Toulouse and Paris.
Employed in a red coat, a carmine handbag on the wrist, Geneviève Albinet patient in front of the fountain located at the corner of the Boulbonne and Cantegril streets, in the city center of Toulouse. If this coquette historian art opted for this meeting point, it is because there is a remarkable work of the Toulouse sculptor Jacques Labatut, which adorns the Fontaine Boulbonne. It is about “La Garonne offering electricity to the city of Toulouse”, ended in 1911. “On this statue, we notice a nude under the ark of the bridge, personifying the Garonne, supposed to hold a bulb in hand , unfortunately this has disappeared.
Labatut’s works are omnipresent in the pink city “like” the Roland in Roncevaux, boulevard Lazare Carnot, “Le Raymond VI” in the Salle des Illustres du Capitole. Others are at the Augustinian Museum, including “Winter”, “the martyred child”, “the twelve hours”, some are awaiting restoration. The sculptures of Lababatut are even present in Bordeaux (the eloquence at the Girondins monument), in Hagetmau, in the Landes (Pascal Duprat), in Paris (the printing works at the National Library, “Music” at the Grand Palais, the Mario at the National Opera …), etc. Not to mention all the pieces belonging to private collectors.
Repair
A graduate of art history and passionate about outdoor sculptures, Geneviève Albinet spent most of her time, in Paris, at the Orsay Research Center and in the National Archives, in the past five years, to search the ‘Work of the sculptor Jacques Labatut, born in Toulouse on July 30, 1851, “at n ° 1 in Place Dupuy”, she specifies. His research has given rise to two publications: a book called “Jacques Labatut, course of a Toulouse sculptor (Editions du non Verbal- Ambx) and a reasoned catalog illustrated with his work in the Bulletin of the History Society French art.
If Geneviève Albinet set his sights on the sculptor Jacques Labatut, it is to repair a forgetfulness. “I find that Jacques Labatut remains unjustly overlooked, especially in relation to Falguière”.
From Toulouse to Paris via Rome
Passed by the Fine Arts of Toulouse, the sculptor continues his training in Paris. He obtained the Prix de Rome in 1881, with his high relief “the cry of combat”. Very eclectic in terms of his style, Labatut “begins with classic, goes through the neo-Baroque, inspired by François Rude And continues with Art Deco. We also find at home the naturalistic side of Jules Dalou “, Details the historian. How then to explain that he is so little renamed ?.” It is linked to the fact that this period of the end XIX-DEBIT XX is little considered to have the circles of art. In addition, everything was destroyed by wars or lost, “said Toulouse.
If Geneviève Albinet puts so much energy today to bring Jacques Labatut out of the Shadow, “it is for the pink city to finally value its work and its talent and pay tribute to it,” she concludes.
