Encrier Fantastique

“Encrier Fantastique” Bronze Self-Portrait Inkwell

Cast in 1879 from a model by Sarah Bernhardt for Thiebaut Frères, Encrier Fantastique is a rare and striking bronze inkwell conceived as a fantastical self-portrait. Bernhardt reportedly traveled with the inkwell during her American tour, exhibiting it in the lobbies of theaters where she appeared in leading roles.

The figure is cast as a sphinx with the body of a griffin and the wings of a bat. Tragic and Comic theater masks form epaulettes at the shoulders, terminating in a horned skull that supports the inkwell. The removable cover is modeled as a stack of books and bears the inscription Sarah Bernhardt, Thiebaut Frères, Fondeurs. The front facing cauldron likely was designed as a pen wipe, used to remove excess ink from a dip pen nib after writing

French actress and artist Sarah Bernhardt (1844–1923), celebrated as La Divine Sarah, enjoyed a legendary career spanning six decades. Believed to have sculpted the original model herself, this work represents a marked departure from her more conventional or Romantic subjects.

The inkwell’s iconography likely reflects Bernhardt’s own life and theatrical identity. In 1879 she was rehearsing the role of Blanche de Chelles in Octave Feuillet’s play Le Sphinx, in which the enigmatic and demonic heroine wore a poison ring in the form of a sphinx. The sculpture may simultaneously commemorate this role and serve as an allegorical self-image.

As critic Jules Lemaître famously described her, Bernhardt was “a distant and chimerical creature, both hieratic and serpentine, with a lure both mystical and sensual” a characterization vividly embodied in this work.

Approximately 25 cast’s are known to survive. Examples are held in the following collections:

• Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
• Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
• Princeton University, New Jersey
• Clark Art Institute, Massachusetts