Buste de Placide Massey, Marble bust in Jardin Massey, Tarbes, France

The Buste de Placide Massey is a marble portrait bust in the Jardin Massey in Tarbes, set on a stone pedestal carved with plant motifs. The head is turned slightly and the chest is cut off at mid-height, as in a classic memorial bust. The garden around it was laid out by Placide Massey himself, who directed the park's creation.

Placide Massey (1777–1853), a botanist from Tarbes, left his fortune and plant collections to the city on condition that a garden be laid out; the Jardin Massey opened in 1854. The marble bust by Henri Nelli was inaugurated in 1882, nearly thirty years after Massey's death, as the garden's founder came to be commemorated on the site he endowed.

Placide Massey (1777–1853) was a botanist and agronomist from Tarbes who directed the royal gardens at Neuilly and supplied plants to the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. The garden that carries his name, laid out from 1850, holds his tomb and an orangery, and the marble bust by Henri Nelli, dated 1882, keeps his memory among the collections he helped shape.

The bust is located near the southwest entrance of the public Jardin Massey and is easily accessible to visitors. You can encounter it during a walk through the garden, which sits in central Tarbes.

The bust was commissioned by the town of Tarbes and entrusted to Henri Nelli, a sculptor from the Pyrénées. Local accounts hold that the face was carved from the wrong death mask, so the features shown are not those of Placide Massey, the horticulturist who laid out the garden around it.