The Thinker, By Alexandre Charpentier

The Thinker, bronze proof resting on an onyx base. Signed A. Charpentier on the base. 
This work appeared for the first time in the 1895 catalog of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts as a pewter inkwell cover for a stoneware by Delaherche (a copy is kept in the Musée d'Orsay). Alexandre Charpentier reproduced his figure in 1899 for the gallery-store La Maison Moderne. Mounted on an inkwell of Maurice Dufrêne in flamed stoneware of Dalpayrat, he knew a great success and appeared on the poster of the gallery drawn by Manuel Orazi. 

Alexandre Charpentier was born into a modest family, the son of a road worker. At the age of twelve, he was apprenticed to an ornamental engraver, then to a pipe maker. Aspiring to a more artistic career, he decided to become a sculptor. His father's rejection led him to several years of vagrancy and misery before he entered the Ecole des Beaux Arts in 1873, as a student of Hubert Ponscarme, who encouraged and supported him. 
In 1890, he exhibited at the Belgian avant-garde Salon, the XX, and enjoyed great success and numerous commissions, lifting him out of his difficult condition; a success that continued throughout the decade.
In 1895, he exhibited at the Art Nouveau gallery inaugurated by Siegfried Bing, where his works were noticed, and then in 1899 at Julius Meier Graefe's shop-gallery La Maison Moderne.
In 1896, he was one of the founders of the group "L'Art dans Tout" which organized annual exhibitions until 1901, with the aim of challenging the hierarchies of major and minor arts and making art accessible to the middle and working classes.
The following years, Alexandre Charpentier continues to exhibit but in a more punctual way. Let us note the inauguration of the Maus Room at the museum of Ixelles where several works of the artist appear there. The sculptor died shortly after, in 1909.