Paul Troubetzkoy – Musée d’Orsay, France

30 Sep — 11 Jan 2026

Paul Troubetzkoy
The Sculptor Prince

From September 30, 2025 to January 11, 2026

The exhibition traces the extraordinary career of this Italian artist, a Russian prince by birth and Parisian by adoption, who also pursued a brilliant career in the United States. Driven by his great talent as a portraitist, he was sought after by a cosmopolitan elite, celebrities, all of Paris, and even the first stars of American cinema. His life was punctuated by decisive encounters and friendships with men of letters, Tolstoy in Russia, George Bernard Shaw in Paris, with whom he shared a vegetarian lifestyle, quite unusual for the time. Beyond the portraits that made his reputation, the exhibition will highlight his animal sculpture, as well as his astonishing works related to the animal cause, of which he was, before his time, a fervent defender.

Developed in partnership with the Museo del Paesaggio in Verbania, the exhibition is an opportunity to present part of Troubetzkoy’s studio collection, bequeathed to this Italian museum after his death. It invites a fresh look at his practice and his recognizable style. The way Troubetzkoy works his models with small, energetic touches that, in the bronze casts, catch and make the light vibrate on the metal surface, will clearly pose the question of Impressionism in sculpture.

Visitors will discover a sensitive and modern artist, particularly subtle in his ability to capture the fluidity of bodies, the energy of movement, and the strength of character. His work, which spans the late 19th ^and early 20th ^centuries , will also provide a vibrant image of the Belle Époque. A catalog will be published for the occasion, the first work in French on this sculptor who nevertheless spent part of his life in Paris.

Indeed, if Paris gave Troubetzkoy the opportunity to launch his career internationally, Milan, where he settled at the age of 18 in 1884, was the city that allowed him to discover, train, and define himself as an artist free from any academic constraints. There he frequented the main figures of the literary and artistic movement of the Scapigliati, the painters Ranzoni and Cremona and the sculptor Grandi, playing an important role during his early years of training. He made a public name there by participating in the main exhibitions (Brera, the Famiglia Artistica, the Permanente) every year from 1886 to 1897, before his departure for Russia. He created his first masterpieces there, notably the bust portrait of the painter Giovanni Segantini modeled in 1896 and whose bronze edition was a huge success. Troubetzkoy’s first patrons were Milanese (for portraits or several tombs at the Cimitero Monumentale). It was also thanks to a Milanese engineer that eight of the artist’s sculptures were presented at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, and that four of them were then shown the following year at the California Midwinter International Exhibition in San Francisco and were purchased by businessman Michael Henry de Young for the city’s museum, which would encourage the sculptor to travel to California in 1917. Throughout his career, Troubetzkoy continued to exhibit in Milan, until 1936, two years before his death. Not only does the Galleria d’Arte Moderna own many important sculptures by Troubetzkoy, but its collection also includes works by the Scapigliatura artists who guided his early career.

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