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Popelin, Claudius(-Marcel)
(b Paris, 2 Nov 1825; d Paris, 17 May 1892). French enameller, painter and writer. He was a pupil of François-Edouard Picot until 1846 and of Ary Scheffer from 1848 to 1858. He began his career as a history painter, and from 1852 to 1862 he sent paintings based on French and Italian Renaissance subjects to the Salon; from 1860, however, his study of the 16th century inclined him towards the decorative arts. He translated Cipriano di Michele Piccolpasso’s Li tre libri dell’arte del vasaio (1556–9) and, though initially producing faience, he preferred the delicate technique of painting on enamel, which he learnt from Alfred Meyer (1832–1904). Working in the tradition of the 16th-century Limosin family, from 1863 he devoted the next 30 years to the art of enamelling. His first works have intense colours enhanced by the sparkle of silver foil beneath and are notable for the backgrounds coloured with a violet of his own invention. He liked to assemble several enamel plaques together within the same frame to develop a single allegorical or historical theme, as in the portrait of Napoleon III (1865; Paris, Mus. d’Orsay; for illustration see BONAPARTE, (8)), which also includes portraits of Charlemagne, Napoleon I and others. His masterpiece, Triumph of Truth (1.7*1.5 m, exh. Salon 1867; untraced), consisted of portraits of 12 philosophers arranged around the central figure. His success resulted in orders from manufacturers, and his enamels were used to decorate furniture, bronzes, silver and gold objects and bookbinding plates. Popelin was an erudite artist, a bibliophile and a poet and was one of the circle of artists who met at the salons of Princess Mathilde Bonaparte. He popularized the art of enamelling through several theoretical essays. With the help of photography, after 1870 he adopted the more subtle technique of enamelling in gold grisaille to execute a series of portraits of contemporary celebrities (e.g. Baron Hippolyte Lazzey, 1890; Paris, Mus. d’Orsay). A retrospective of Popelin’s work was organized at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 1892.
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