Queer Places:
Chateau La Gauterie, Clauzure, 24320 Saint-Paul-Lizonne, France
Académie Julian, Passage des Panoramas, 75002 Paris
Cimetière de Saint-Paul-Lizonne, 114 Rte du Dr Gaillard, 24320 Saint-Paul-Lizonne, France

Marie Marcelle Jane Poupelet (April 19, 1874 - November 17, 1932) was born on April 19, 1874, in Saint-Paul-Lizonne, France, spending her early childhood at the Château de la Gauterie in Clauzure. The daughter of a lawyer and sub-prefect, she moved with her family to Bordeaux in 1882. She began her formal artistic studies at the École des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux, breaking barriers as the first woman admitted to the institution and earning a teaching diploma in drawing in 1892. Seeking alternatives to academic training, she moved to Paris to briefly attend the Académie Julian under Denys Puech, eventually joining the circles of Auguste Rodin and Antoine Bourdelle. She worked in Rodin’s studio from 1900 to 1904 during its peak global fame, while simultaneously honing her skills between 1897 and 1900 under sculptor Lucien Schnegg.

To bypass gender bias in the art world, Poupelet initially submitted her work to the Salon under the male pseudonym Simon de la Vergne, winning a bronze medal in 1900 for her Decorative Fountain. In 1904, the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts awarded her a travel grant, allowing her to explore Italy, Tunisia, Algeria, and Spain. Throughout her career, Poupelet gained state recognition, selling key works like Woman at her toilette in 1910, Sleeping Woman in 1923, and a bronze cow sculpture in 1928. She developed a distinct technical process by modeling in clay, casting in plaster, carving the mold directly, and personally chiseling and patinating her final bronzes. Alongside her celebrated, geometric farm animal sculptures, she focused heavily on the female nude.

During World War I, Poupelet halted her fine art practice to craft wooden toys for charity. In 1918, she joined the Studio for Portrait Masks in Paris alongside American sculptor Anna Ladd and Frenchman Robert Wlérick. Working with the American Red Cross, she modeled wax and electroplated copper facial prosthetics from photographs to help restore the identities of disfigured soldiers.

Poupelet was deeply connected to Anglo-Saxon feminist circles and early women's rights organizations. In 1912, while in her late twenties, she formed a profound, lifelong personal and artistic relationship with the American sculptor Janet Scudder. This partnership informed Poupelet’s subversion of traditional artistic representations of women. Rather than depicting the female body for the gratification of a presumptively heterosexual male viewer, Poupelet frequently rendered female nudes from the back. These compositions minimized secondary sexual characteristics to articulate a holistic, self-contained female eroticism and autonomy.

In her later leadership roles, Poupelet was elected president of the National Society of Fine Arts in 1921 and served as Vice-President of the Salon des Indépendants, championing peers like Aristide Maillol and René Iché. In 1928, she was named a Knight of the Legion of Honour. Health complications eventually forced her to set aside sculpture for drawing, though she co-founded the animal art collective "Group of Twelve" with François Pompon in 1932. Jane Poupelet died of cancer on October 17, 1932, in Talence. In 1934, her family donated a significant body of her work to the French state, establishing her lasting presence in national collections, including the Musée d'Orsay and the Centre Pompidou.

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