23/2/23 - Acquisition - Paris, Musée de la Vie romantique - "Camped and draped as he was, he seemed modeled on a statue" Thus Dumas père described the actor Étienne Mélingue, whose youth before success he recounted in a story entitled Une vie d’artiste, published in 1854. This comparison with a statue is all the more judicious since Mélingue was both an actor and a sculptor, agile on the stage and skilful with clay. He triumphed on the Parisian dramatic stage during the July Monarchy and the Second Empire, and exhibited works at the Salon, winning a third-class medal in 1852. The Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen had dedicated an exhibition to him in 2018 that evoked his dual career. One of the main works was his portrait in pastel in the role of Salvator Rosa made by Eugene Giraud and presented at the Universal Exhibition of 1855. Salvator Rosa, who was also an actor, painter, musician and poet, inspired a play by Ferdinand Dugué. On the occasion of this exhibition, the Caen museum unveiled a series of watercolors that the painter Gaston Mélingue, son of Étienne, had done to illustrate the 1902 edition of Une vie d’artiste.
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- Étienne-Marin Mélingue, (1807-1875)
Saint Cecilia, c. 1842
Bronze - 41 x 19 x 15 cm
Paris, Musée de la Vie romantique
Photo: Musée de la Vie romantique - See the image in its page
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The Musée de la Vie romantique, which holds a watercolor also showing Mélingue in the role of Salvator Rosa, meanwhile, purchased a bronze by him from the Galerie La Nouvelle Athènes, depicting Saint Cecilia dressed in Renaissance clothes. It evokes the historicist trend of the time and illustrates the taste of the bourgeoisie under the July Monarchy for small edition bronzes, which decorated interiors at reasonable prices thanks to the improved process of sand casting. Mélingue thus created a whole series of figures, allegories, historical characters or genre scenes. He especially realized the effigies of numerous actors, artists and of course writers published by the founders Susse, Corneille, Molière, Rabelais, Racine, Shakespeare...
Étienne Mélingue was born in Caen and trained at the free school of drawing and sculpture of the city, first with the painter and miniaturist Jean-Pierre-Henri Élouis, then with the Italian sculptor, draftsman, architect and musician Odelli. He left for Paris in 1826 and worked as an ornamentalist on the construction site of the Madeleine church. But his first desire was to be a theater artist. He joined travelling troupes and travelled for a while in the West Indies. In 1832, he joined the Theatre des Arts in Rouen, then came back to Paris, entered the Porte-Saint-Martin theater in 1834, and preferred the Ambigu-Comique in 1840. Endowed with an advantageous physique, Mélingue played the first jobs in Dumas’ theatrical dramas. The role of d’Artagnan in the adaptation of The Three Musketeers at the Ambigu theater in 1845 earned him a triumph and the status of the boulevard’s first actor with panache.
In 1847, he joined Alexandre Dumas’ Théâtre-Historique troupe, which closed in 1850, and then played mainly at the Porte-Saint-Martin. Success did not abandon him, he distinguished himself in the plays of Paul Meurice, in particular Benvenuto Cellini and Fanfan la Tulipe, or Cadio, written in collaboration with George Sand. To embody Cellini, he designed on stage at each performance the statuette of Hébé, the bronze of which was exhibited at the 1853 Salon.
As Gaëlle Rio, director of the museum, points out, this small statue of Saint Cecilia, an allegory of music, has found its place in the former home of Ary Scheffer, where Chopin and Gounod were received. It joins in the collections another small bronze of the saint, this time a cellist, made by Theodore Gechter.