A French bronze self-portrait of Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923)

Though she is most well known as an actress, Sarah Bernhardt was an equally talented painter and sculptor. This bronze chimera, modelled as a recumbent winged sphinx with a spiny reptilian tail and the clawed limbs of a mythical beast, clutching a bowl with massive ram's horns and set with a devil's head, represents a self-portrait by the famous Sarah Bernhardt .

A bronze reduction based on the terracotta sculpture created by the artist around 1870. This is the paperweight version, slightly smaller than the famous inkwell published by Thiebaud Frères around 1880.

In this self-portrait, a supernatural Bernhardt appears wearing masks of Tragedy and Comedy on each shoulder, alluding to the actress’s ability to transform into different characters. In 1879, Bernhardt was rehearsing for the role of Blanche de Chelles in Octave Feuillet's play Le Sphinx, in which the mysterious and even demonic heroine wore a poison ring in the form of a sphinx, and with whom Bernhardt may well have identified.
An identical model is preserved at the Intercommunal Museum of Étampes (see last photo)