Albert Bartholomé, a sculptor born in 1848, had begun as a painter; when his wife died, in 1887, he turned to sculpture, and it was the monument he raised to her that revealed his gift for mourning. Paris commissioned from him in 1895 the cemetery's Monument to the Dead: he delivered the “Gateway to the Beyond”, in which a couple cross a threshold. He also designed the Croix de Guerre, in 1915.
The story
Albert Bartholomé was born on 29 August 1848 at Thiverval-Grignon. He began as a painter in Geneva, where in 1874 he married Prospérie Gabrielle de Fleury, known as Périe, then settled in Paris and became a close friend of Edgar Degas.
His wife's death in 1887 settled the rest of his life. He had been showing paintings at the Salon since 1879; he never went back. It was Degas who pushed him to cut Périe's funeral monument at Crécy-en-Brie with his own hands — and that tomb revealed a sculptor of grief.
In 1895, at the Salon du Champ-de-Mars, the City of Paris commissioned a memorial to the dead for Père-Lachaise. In 1899 he delivered the “Porte de l'au-delà”, the door to the beyond: a stone high relief where a couple steps through a threshold, ringed by figures that hesitate, and beneath which the recumbent dead wait.
The Grand Prix for sculpture at the World's Fair of 1900 confirmed what Père-Lachaise had revealed. He went on to carve the monument to Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the Panthéon, in 1912, and in 1915 drew the final design of the croix de guerre.
He died in Paris on 30 October 1928 and lies in Division 4, on the main avenue — the same walk as his memorial to the dead, a few dozen metres away. The recumbent effigy that covers him is by Henri Bouchard: the sculptor of recumbent figures lies under one carved by another man.
The grave
A stone recumbent effigy, the work of Henri Bouchard (1875-1960), and an inscription of calculated modesty: “Albert Bartholomé, 1848-1928, author of the monument to the dead”. Nothing else — no titles, no honours, no Panthéon, no Croix de Guerre. The sculptor who gave Père-Lachaise its most visited monument, a few dozen metres away on the same avenue, is content to point to that work, and leaves it to a fellow sculptor to depict him lying down.
On site, do not miss
Bouchard's recumbent effigy, then walk up the main avenue to the Monument to the Dead: fifty metres separate the work from its author.
Visitors' questions
Where is Albert Bartholomé's grave?
In Division 4, Avenue Principale, first row — the same path as the Monument to the Dead he sculpted, just a few dozen metres away. A stone effigy shows him lying at rest, a few minutes from the main entrance.
François AragoWho made Père-Lachaise's Monument to the Dead?
Albert Bartholomé, commissioned by the City of Paris at the Salon du Champ-de-Mars in 1895. The work, completed in 1899, is called the “Gateway to the Beyond”: a couple crosses a threshold, surrounded by hesitating figures.
Paul BaudryWho sculpted his own grave?
Henri Bouchard (1875-1960), who gave him a stone effigy. The sculptor of the cemetery's greatest funerary monument thus rests beneath the work of a fellow sculptor, fifty metres from his own creation, and his epitaph does no more than point towards it.
Jean-Adolphe BeaucéWhy did he turn to sculpture?
He gave up painting in 1886, and the death of his wife Périe the following year turned him decisively towards funerary art: the monument he raised for her at Crécy-en-Brie revealed a sculptor of mourning, and it was this the City of Paris would later commission him to do again.
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