Paul-Albert Bartholomé (1848-1928)
French artist and sculptor, famous for his imposing funerary monuments in an academic style with symbolist characteristics. Bartholomé studied at the Académie des Beaux Arts in Paris for a number of years and started his career as a painter. He was only 38 when his wife died and he decided to sculpt a funerary monument for her. The experience caused a shift in his artistic career. By working hard and studying the old masters, Bartholomé developed into a successful sculptor of, in particular, imposing funerary monuments. The most famous are the monument for Rousseau in the Panthéon and the renowned Monument to the Dead at the Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris. Bartholomé’s work feels academic and leans towards Symbolism which developed in France as a response to Impressionism and Social Realism. In a certain sense it constituted a return to Romanticism, but in a still, modest form and much more subjective, replete with deep, mystical ideals.
