Albert Émile Clément Dubosq is one of the most prolific Belgian scenographers of the Belle Époque. Between 1890 and 1925 Dubosq decorated 446 theatrical entertainments of virtually every possible kind: ballet, circus, drama, opera, operetta, pantomime, revue, and vaudeville. Dubosq is furthermore one of the few scenic painters of his generation to have left a substantial sample of his art, namely twenty-one complete sets. Comprising Europe's largest holding of historical decors, the hundreds of flats and drops of the ‘Dubosq’ collection have survived at the Schouwburg of Kortrijk since 1920.
Career
Childhood and education in Paris
Dubosq was born into a family of gilders that had moved from the provinces to Paris around the middle of the nineteenth century. His father, Henri Dubosq, was a native of Le Havrewhile his mother, Adèle Briet, originatined from Quivières. Apparently showing signs of artistry already in his childhood, Dubosq began to master the secrets of illusionistic set design at the age of thirteen. He apprenticed with four Parisian decorators that were acclaimed in their day: Pierre Zarra, Eugène Carpezat, Jean Daran, and Enrico Robecchi. In keeping with his teachers, all four of whom produced extensive portfolios for several theaters in and outside Paris, Dubosq fostered the ambition to become an independent artist. However, since fin-de-siècle Paris was already saturated with ateliers de décors, Dubosq emigrated to Belgium in June 1887 to establish his own workshop in the country's flourishing capital, Brussels.
A rising star of fin-de-siècle Brussels
Dubosq first enlarged his experience at the Théâtre de la Monnaie under the supervision of Pierre Devis and Armand Lynen, who had offered him a job. On 3 January 1890, he debuted as a self-employed stage designer at the Théâtre de l’Alcazar, furnishing scenery for Luc Malpertuis and George Garnir's Ex-Clarmonde, a vaudevillian spoof of Massenet's opera Esclarmonde. 5 February 1890 saw the premiere of Bruxelles à cheval, an ‘equestrian revue’ by Malpertuis staged at the Cirque Royal. Bruxelles à cheval was to be the first of Dubosq's many contributions to the revue, a satirical genre involving spoken dialogues, sung couplets, ballets, and parades. Most frequently performed around the end of the year, the revue enjoyed such a vogue in fin-de-siècle Brussels that many productions ran for more than a hundred performances: Bruxelles fin de siècle, for instance, was performed 145 times, while Bruxelles Haut-Congo toured Belgium. Dubosq gave his imagination free rein in a string of works coupling the locus of the Belgian capital—often invoked in the title—with recent events in politics, culture and technology: Bruxelles électrique, Bruxelles port de mer, Bruxelles sans gêne, and so on. With a fresh palette and a photographic sense of realism, Dubosq’s revue sets conjured up the new hotspots of Brussels, next to featuring comic fantasies and even Jules Vernian science-fiction. Dubosq began to be called upon for other types of spectacle as well. At the Alhambra and Théâtre Royal du Parc in Brussels, the artist provided spoken plays of melodramatic allure with historicist and exotic sets that received praise from the press and audience alike. His scenery fir Judith Gautier's japonaiserie La marchande de sourires was thus extolled:
Le deuxième acte nous transporte dans un paysage fantastique, dont Dubosq a fait une merveille d’impression poignante : les rives du Sonnuda-Gara, la nuit. La berge descend rapidement vers la rivière que longe une palissade à demi brisée. Sur l’autre rive, on aperçoit des cahutes de pêcheurs, dans les bambous, et les toitures des tours sacrées. Une grosse lanterne rouge éclaire, seule, ce coin désolé … Au troisième acte, un décor superbe, un décor de rêve, de Dubosq encore, et qui fera sensation sans aucun doute ; deux jardins contigus séparés par un mur qui disparaît sous l’admirable végétation du pays; une rivière serpente parmi les lotus, les buissons aux mille fleurs du printemps.
At the Théâtre des Galeries Saint-Hubert, operettas old and new received a luxurious treatment from Dubosq that often rivaled earlier and contemporary Parisian stagings. Complete interiors, among which the auditoriums of the Pôle Nord, Palais d’Éte, Alcazar and Tréteaux, were decorated by Dubosq. More substantial chores began to fill his order book in the guise of stock sets for the new Stadsschouwburg of Amsterdam, the Casino of Nieuwpoort and Nieuw Circus of Ghent, next to materials for circus companies traveling to Budapest, London, and Vienna. In 1898, Dubosq created the five sets for the itinerant production of Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, which visited sixteen different countries after its premiere at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo. Actively supported by the Belgian press, Dubosq grew into a public figure by the late 1890s. Newspapers published interviews and caricatures, or followed his presence among the high society. ‘Official’ institutions such as the Belgian State invited him to fulfill prestigious commissions and to represent Belgium at the Brussels International Exposition and the Exposition Universelle.
Immediately upon their accession to the directorshop of the Théâtre de la Monnaie, on 1 June 1900, Maurice Kufferath and Guillaume Guidé appointed Dubosq the Monnaie's second peintre-décorateur attitré, next to Devis and Lynen. Dubosq's first contribution to the Monnaie was the “Quartier Latin” set for Giacomo Puccini’s La bohème, Act II. Premiered on 25 October 1900 under the supervision of the composer and publisher Tito Ricordi, this production enjoyed thirty performances in its first run alone and would keep the stage until 1949. Significantly, Puccini and Riccordi were so enthralled by Dubosq’s effort that they had it photographed and incorporated in Riccardo Salvadori’s new design for Act II of Puccini’s masterpiece. After La Bohème, Dubosq received a string of commissions from the Monnaie:
the world premieres of Vincent d’Indy’s L’Étranger, Albert Dupuis’ Jean Michel, Ernest Chausson’s Le roi Arthus, and Dupuis’ Martille
the Belgian premieres of Charpentier’s Louise, Wagner’s Le crépuscule des dieux, Puccini’s Tosca, Massenet’s Le jongleur de Notre-Dame and Ariane, Messager’s Madame Chrysanthème, and Gailhard’s Amaryllis
complete make-overs of Bizet’s Carmen, Gounod’s Faust, Gluck’s Alceste and Armide, and Berlioz’ La damnation de Faust and Les Troyens
Several of this stagings were created by Dubosq in close collaboration with the stage director Charles De Beer and costume designerFernand Khnopff. Dubosq's activity at la Monnaie paved the way to new commissions from other opera houses, such as the Théâtre Royal of Liège, the Grand-Théâtre of Lyon, the Théâtre Royal of Antwerp, the Théâtre Royal of Ostend, the Vlaamse Opera of Antwerp, and the Grand Théâtre of Ghent. The highlight of Dubosq's career was no doubt the staging of Götterdämmerung at the Parisian Académie Nationale de Musique, to which the artist contributed three magnificent sets—with resident set designers Eugène Carpezat and Marcel Jambon furnishing one each.
Venues
Following is a list of venues at which Dubosq's activity is supported by historical evidence:
