French Sculptor Aimé-Jules Dalou’s Boulonnaise allaitant son enfant, Acquired in 1876 by the 3rd Marquess of Sligo, Resurfaces on to the market after 136 years in a Prominent Private Collection in Ireland. Photo: Sotheby's. 

LONDON.- Sotheby’s announced today that it will offer a supremely rare life-size masterpiece in terracotta by the great 19th-century French artist Aimé-Jules Dalou in a London sale of 19th & 20th Century Sculpture on 21 May 2014. Boulonnaise allaitant son enfant (A Young Mother from Boulogne feeding her Child) was acquired directly from the artist in 1876 by George John Browne, 3rd Marquess of Sligo, before being exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1877. It was subsequently installed at Westport House, in Westport, Ireland, where it was on view until last year. Estimated at £300,000-500,000 (€360,000-600,000), the terracotta is one of the last museum-quality life-size works by Dalou in private hands and is being sold by Jeremy Browne, the 11th Marquess of Sligo. 

Alexander Kader, Head of Sotheby’s European Sculpture & Works of Art Department, commented: "Dalou’s ‘Boulonnaise allaitant’ is one of the artist’s defining masterpieces. It is an honour for Sotheby’s to bring this inspiring sculpture to the market for the first time since 1876. The sale will provide collectors and institutions with a matchless opportunity to acquire one of Dalou’s seminal works.” 

Jeremy Browne, the 11th Marquess of Sligo, said: “Dalou’s masterpiece has been enjoyed by generations of visitors to Westport House. We hope that the proceeds raised through its sale will secure the future of one of Ireland’s best-loved attractions for generations to come.” 

Boulonnaise allaitant, dazzling in the humanity of its conception and the virtuosity of its execution, is one of only four groups of a mother and her child in life-size dimensions produced by the artist during his entire career. All four were exhibited at the Royal Academy and each met with an enthusiastic reception from the public and critics. 

Dalou (1838-1902) was one of the greatest French sculptors of the 19th century, with some of his most important works being housed in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. He was recently the focus of a major 2013 retrospective exhibition at the Petit Palais in Paris, Jules Dalou, le sculpteur de la République, which has given Dalou an international profile. The Boulonnaise allaitant is the first major work by the artist to come onto the market since the Petit Palais retrospective. Its location was unknown to the organisers of the exhibition and so its forthcoming sale represents an important rediscovery for Dalou scholarship. 

In 1871, Dalou and his family fled France for England, a consequence of the Franco Prussian War and Dalou’s alignment with the Commune, which collapsed in May of that year. He quickly came to understand the taste of British collectors and maternal themes became a mainstay of his production. With Boulonnaise allaitant, Dalou synthesised two subjects which had preoccupied him in the preceding years, motherhood and women from Boulogne. The composite figure marked the culmination of Dalou’s treatment of both themes that had served his career so well. Dalou thereafter altered his focus and concentrated on public monuments. 

The nursing Boulonnaise has been known until now only as a variant statuette in plaster, with editions in porcelain and bronze. This life-size version in terracotta, signed by the artist and dated 1876, was purchased by George, 3rd Marquess of Sligo, from Dalou’s London studio, with the proviso that the artist be allowed to exhibit it publicly at the Royal Academy before delivery. 

The skill with which Dalou has sculpted the drapery folds and integrated subtle details into the whole composition is comparable with the work of Gianlorenzo Bernini, the 17th century Italian sculptor. In Boulonnaise allaitant, the smaller pleats at the top of the mother’s heavy cloak, the more monumental and sweeping folds below them, the contrasting textures of her tight-fitting bonnet and its quilted extension, the clasp with chain that secures her cloak, the wisp of a cord that secures the bonnet at the base of the neck, all suggest that Dalou is in full command. 

Dalou understood how to enhance the interactive forces of a sculptural work of art, and the medium of terracotta was especially amenable to his treatment of surfaces and details. The loving interaction between the mother and child is also expertly calibrated in its degree of focus, with an intense artistry that unifies form and content. 

Dalou’s participation in the Royal Academy exhibition of 1877 marked an apogee in the artist’s career. His submission was granted the honour of the most prestigious location, the rotunda, alongside the bronze version of Frederick Leighton’s Athlete wrestling a Python. Dalou had encouraged Leighton’s talents as a sculptor and, in turn, Leighton – who became president of the Royal Academy in 1875 – rewarded Dalou’s kindness with this generous, but most deserved gesture. 

George, 3rd Marquess of Sligo
George Browne was the eldest son of Howe Peter, 2nd Marquess of Sligo, famous ‘regency buck’ and friend of Lord Byron, Thomas de Quincy and the Prince Regent. After his father’s death in 1845 he faced the appalling realities of the Irish Famine. Disillusioned with Britain’s feeble humanitarian response to the crisis, he personally shipped in food for his tenants and campaigned for pioneering economic and social reforms. It is rather apt that this most enlightened of Dalou’s patrons married a Frenchwoman named Isobel Perronet in 1878, a year after the Boulonnaise allaitant had been installed at Westport House.

Aimé-Jules Dalou (French, 1838-1902), Boulonnaise allaitant son enfant (A Young Mother from Boulogne feeding her Child). signed and dated: DALOU 1876; terracotta, on the original wooden revolving base; terracotta: 137cm., 54in., base: 90cm., 35½in. Estimate  300,000 — 500,000 GBP. Photo Sotheby's

Provenance: George John Browne, 3rd Marquess of Sligo (1820–1896), acquired directly from the artist in 1876 and installed at Westport House, Westport, Ireland, in 1877;
by family descent to the present owner

Exhibited: London, Royal Academy of Arts, 1877, no. 1465 (Une Boulonnaise allaitant son enfant; terra-cotta);
Westport, Westport House, 1877-2013 (on display in the Picture Gallery)

Literature: A. Graves, The Royal Academy Exhibitors, London, 1905, vol. ii, p. 234;
A. Simier and M. Kisiel, Jules Dalou, le sculpteur de la République,
Catalogue des sculptures de Jules Dalou conserveés au Petit Palais,
exh. cat. Petit Palais, Paris, 2013, pp. 346 and 350

This superb, and exceedingly rare, life-size terracotta by Jules Dalou was first exhibited publically in 1877 at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, where it was displayed alongside Frederick Leighton’s Athlete wrestling a Python.  During his entire career, Dalou composed only four such groups of a mother and her child in life-size dimensions.  All were exhibited at the Royal Academy and greeted with great enthusiasm by the contemporary public and critics.  The qualitative excellence of these works is dazzling in the humanity of their conception and virtuosity of execution.

Dalou was one of the greatest French sculptors of the 19th century, but he first established himself as a major artist in London between 1871 and 1879. At the Parisian Salon of 1870 he had attracted widespread admiration with a life-size genre subject, La Brodeuse, but the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune intervened.   As one of the founding members of the Fédération des Artistes, led by Gustave Courbet, he allied himself with the Commune. With its collapse in May 1871, Dalou was forced to flee to England, where he was received by his friend, the painter Alphonse Legros. By the time of the 1872 Royal Academy exhibition, Dalou had come to understand the taste of British collectors.  He scored a major success with two of his entries that season, a young woman in the exotic costume of a Boulonnaise, Jour des Rameaux à Boulogne (a terracotta statuette), and a contemporary Parisian mother, nursing her child, with an English title, Maternal Joy (a life-size statue in patinated plaster).  Legros had already popularized women from Boulogne in his paintings, and Dalou made several more compositions featuring this same motif, as well as creating a small edition of the popular Jour des Rameaux for the market.

Maternal themes were a mainstay of Dalou’s production in England.  His Paysanne française (life-size terracotta statue, Royal Academy, 1873), and Hush-a-bye (life-size terracotta statue with an English title, Royal Academy, 1874) ingratiated him further with British collectors and the public.  He also created, but did not exhibit at the Royal Academy, a statuette, Une Parisienne allaitant, which was a variant on Maternal Joy.  The Boulonnaise motif reappeared, with the same beautiful protagonist in the same costume, as a single figure seen kneeling or seated in prayer (Boulonnaise au chapelet), and paired with an older woman (Boulonnaises à l’Eglise, terracotta, Royal Academy 1876).  All of these were statuettes, never enlarged to life-size dimensions.

In 1876 Dalou synthesized the maternal and Boulonnaise themes with the present Boulonnaise allaitant.  The young woman, recognizably the same character, has left behind her virginal devotions and become a mother.  The unvarying cycle of provincial life has naturally replicated itself.  This composite figure marked the end of Dalou’s treatment of both themes that had served his career so well.  Thereafter, he concentrated on public monuments, which he had come to regard as the highest calling of a 19th-century sculptor.  Echoes of the maternal theme might appear in the context of a public work, such as in theCharity surmounting a drinking fountain for the Royal Exchange in London [1878], and the monument to Queen Victoria’s dead grandchildren for the royal chapel at Windsor [1877-79], but genre, intimate themes, and mothers with their children, virtually disappeared from his repertoire.

The nursing Boulonnaise has been known to us until now only as a statuette in plaster, with editions in porcelain (Sèvres) and bronze (Susse Frères). The pose of the present life-size terracotta reverses that of the smaller versions, but is identical to a drawing by Dalou and an anonymous engraving, both made after the work, that appeared in the art press at the time of the Royal Academy exhibition.  As is consistent with Dalou’s working procedure, with each stage of the enlargement from sketch to final statue, he refined the work and added greater detail.  Reversals of pose occurred frequently during this process, so the smaller versions in reverse with fewer refinements and details must precede the life-size version, rather than be reductions made for purposes of an edition afterward.

Arguably, no other sculptor since Gianlorenzo Bernini dazzled his audience with the virtuosity of his drapery folds and spectacular details integrated into the whole fabric of a sculpture, the way Dalou could.  The smaller pleats at the top of the mother’s heavy cloak, the more monumental and sweeping folds below them, the contrasting textures of her tight-fitting bonnet and its quilted extension, and the lovingly-rendered clasp with chain that secures her cloak, as well as the wisp of a cord that secures the bonnet at the base of her neck, all suggest that a master is in charge. Dalou fully embraced realism, but never at the expense of his intense artistry.  He could unify form and content so totally that they seem to dissolve into each other.  The loving interaction between mother and child is enhanced by an artistic focus so intense that it seems as if we are witnessing life itself, rather than a fabrication by an artist.

Dalou understood that degrees of focus, from intensely realized to peripherally blurred, are essential to mimic the way we experience the world and thereby enhance the interactive force of a work of sculpture.  Terracotta is especially amenable to such treatment.  No other artist working in three dimensions understood this perceptual fact, which Édouard Manet and his Impressionist descendants had already articulated in paint, as well as Dalou. Une Boulonnaise allaitant forcefully demonstrates selective degrees of treating surfaces and details throughout a whole work of sculptural art.

Dalou’s success and recognition in London had grown with each passing year, but the Royal Academy exhibition of 1877 marked an apogee.  That year his submission had been granted the honour of the most prestigious location, the rotunda, alongside the bronze version of Frederick Leighton’s Athlete wrestling a Python.  The two men were good friends, and it was through Dalou’s encouragement that the bronze Athlete came into existence.  Dalou was extremely grateful for the honour bestowed upon him and his Boulonnaise allaitant.  On May 2, 1877, he modestly wrote to Leighton: “I was very flattered by the honor that they have paid my humble terracotta, placing it next to your bronze; this is one more happy memory that I have of the academy and of you, my dear Leighton, because I know how great a role you have played to have my statue so well placed.”

Dalou’s statue was acquired by George Browne, 3rd Marquess of Sligo. By family tradition, it was purchased directly from the artist’s London studio in 1876. As was often his practice, Dalou would have sold the work with the proviso that he be allowed to exhibit it publicly before delivery, hence its appearance in the 1877 Royal Academy exhibition. George Browne was the eldest son of Howe Peter, 2nd Marquess of Sligo, famous ‘regency buck’ and friend of Lord Byron, Thomas de Quincy and the Prince Regent. After his father’s death in 1845 he faced the appalling realities of the Irish Famine. Disillusioned with Britain’s feeble humanitarian response to the crisis, he personally shipped in food for his tenants and campaigned for pioneering economic and social reforms. It is rather apt that this most enlightened of Dalou’s patrons married a Frenchwoman named Isobel Perronet in 1878, a year after the Boulonnaise allaitant had been installed at Westport House.

FURTHER SALE HIGHLIGHT
Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier’s Jeune fille des environs de Rome Sotheby’s sale presents two of the most important 19th-century sculptures on the market in recent years. Alongside the Dalou, the auction features an important and beautifully carved marble bust by Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier that comes directly from the artist’s family. Jeune fille des environs de Rome (Young Girl from the environs of Rome) represents one of Cordier’s rare Roman subjects. Marbles by Cordier are becoming increasingly desirable to collectors and museums. Characteristic of the artist’s finest works, the marble has been enlivened with the added dimension of polychromy and appears to have been the only one of Cordier’s Roman sculptures to have been polychromed. Like Dalou, Cordier (1827-1905) was one of the greatest French 19th-century sculptors. This sculpture was displayed at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris in 2004 in an exhibition on Cordier. The combination of excellence in the quality of carving, together with the delicate hints of colour, serves to create one of his most subtle and charming busts (estimate £70,000-120,000 / €84,000-120,000)

Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier (French, 1827-1905), Jeune fille des environs de Rome. signed: CORDIER, tinted white marble, 80cm., 31½in. overall. Estimate 70,000 — 100,000 GBP. Photo Sotheby's

Provenance: Sale of Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier's Studio, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 21 January 1865, no. 32;
there re-acquired by Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier for 1,210FF;
by descent to the present owners

Exhibited: Paris, Musée d'Orsay, Charles Cordier (1827-1905), sculpteur, l'autre et l'ailleurs, 2 February - 2 May, 2004, no. 27;
Quebec City, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Charles Cordier (1827-1905), sculpteur, l'autre et l'ailleurs, 10 June - 6 September, 2004, no. 27;
New York, Dahesh Museum of Art, Facing the Other. Charles Cordier (1827-1905), 12 October 2004 - 9 January 2005

Literature: J. Durand-Révillon, 'Un promoteur de la sculpture polychrome sous le Second Empire, Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier (1827-1905)', Bulletin de la Société de l'histoire de l'art français, session of 6 February 1982, 1984, pp. 196, no. 122;
L. de Margerie and É. Papet (eds.), Charles Cordier (1827-1905), sculpteur, l'autre et l'ailleurs [Facing the Other. Charles Cordier (1827-1905)], exh. cat. Musée d'Orsay, Paris; Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Quebec City; Dahesh Museum of Art, New York, 2004, pp. 38-39, 182, no. 27, cat. res. no. 323

This important and beautifully carved marble bust by Charles Cordier comes directly from the artist’s family. It represents one of his rare Roman subjects, a young girl from the plains around Rome, the Campagna. Exhibited at the landmark 2004 retrospective exhibition Facing the Other. Charles Cordier Ethnographic Sculptor (1827-1905), the bust was offered by Cordier at his 1865 studio sale, but, unusually, was bought back by the sculptor, indicating its significance both to Cordier and within his wider oeuvre. Characteristic of the artist’s greatest works, the marble has been enlivened with the added dimension of polychromy. However, in contrast to the dazzling polychromed sculptures for which Cordier became most famous, here he has subtly tinted the marble, providing the viewer with the fleeting sense that the girl might, Pygmalion-like, just come alive.

Charles Cordier was one of the greatest French 19th-century sculptors. Appointed ethnographic sculptor to the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle in Paris in 1851, a post he held for fifteen years, Cordier established an international reputation for himself through his sympathetic and arresting portrayals of different racial types. Initially inspired by the Orientalist movement in art, in particular Eugène Delacroix’s Eastern subjects, Cordier’s oeuvre increasingly adopted a scientific aspect. The ethnographic busts for which he became most famous often betray a startling naturalism, tempered by dramatic poses and exotic costumes. 

Interest in the different peoples of the globe preoccupied French society in the 19th-century. The fields of anthropology and ethnology became increasingly high profile. Exhibitions which showcased living people from other regions of the world drew huge crowds. Disturbingly, numerous theorists published writings espousing the superiority of white Europeans over blacks. Cordier, however, displayed a palpable sympathy for people of other races in his ethnographic busts. Chiefly concerned with the search for beauty in every peoples, he wrote in 1865 before his trip to Egypt, ‘I wish to present the race just as it is, in its own beauty, absolutely true to life, with its passions, its fatalism, in its quiet pride and conceit, in its fallen grandeur, but the principles of which have remained since antiquity’ (as quoted by Margerie, op. cit., p. 28). Few contemporary commentators, with the exception of writers such as Victor Hugo, the Abbé Grégoire, and Madame de Staël, offered such enlightened views. In his official role at the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle, Cordier embarked on a number of government sponsored missions to different parts of the world in order to record a series of modern racial types in sculpture, the ideal beauty of each peoples. He travelled to Algeria in 1856, where he modelled his famous Mauresque d’Alger chantant (Moorish Woman of Algiers Singing) and, as mentioned above, to Egypt in 1866, where he conceived his celebrated Cheik Arabe du Caire (Arab Sheik of Cairo). However, it was in 1858 that Cordier travelled to Greece, stopping for a number of months in Rome, where he created the present masterful ethnographic study.

In Rome, Cordier was confronted with the world of the ancients, the Eternal City, which had inspired countless generations of French artists. Writing to Frédéric Bourgeois de Mercey from Rome in June 1858, he exclaimed ‘the great masters have inflamed my desire to work’ (AN, Paris, F21 72). Cordier created three important sculptures whilst in Rome: the present bust, his La belle Gallinara, Jeune fille des environs de Rome (The Beautiful Gallinara, Young Girl from around Rome), and hisRomaine du Trastévère, 25 ans (A Young Woman of Trastevere). The latter, believed lost when the catalogue for the 2004 Cordier exhibition was published, was subsequently rediscovered and sold in these rooms on 23 November 2010, lot 1. A monumental bust, with virtuoso carved pearls suspended from the girl’s neck, this marble provides a sense of the pride and grandeur of Rome. In contrast to Cordier’s two other Roman works, the Gallinara, of which the locations of both the plaster and the marble are unknown, was conceived as a life-size statue. Interestingly, Cordier used the same model for both this statue and the present bust, and there are obvious stylistic and compositional correspondences between the two, most notably the distinctive hat.

Cordier’s decision to represent a girl from the lands surrounding Rome, theCampagna, is significant. The most revered French artist to have trained and worked in Rome, Claude Lorrain (1600-1682), made the Campagna the focus of his artistic endeavours, idealizing its flat, low-lying, landscape with temples, pastoral figures and placid grazing animals. Claude’s attempts to conjour up a lost antique past (the 17th-century Campagna was, in fact, a barren, over-farmed, hostile environment, plagued by banditti), inspired generations of French artists, and proved particularly popular with visiting English Grand Tourists, who sought to emulate the landscapes he painted in their own country estates. Cordier’s choice of a model from Rome’s hinterlands might thus be seen as an homage to Claude and to earlier traditions in French art.

The present marble appears to have been the only one of Cordier’s Roman sculptures to have been polychromed, adding a sense of exoticism and vitality to this charming image. Cordier had been interested in the notion of the colour of sculpture since early in his career. Inspired by his namesake, the 17th-century French sculptor active in Rome, Nicolas Cordier (1567-1612), he combined bronze with sumptuous marbles found on his travels, such as in his remarkable oxidized silver-plated bronze and onyx-marble Nègre du Soudan (Negro of the Sudan) in the Musee d’Orsay, Paris. Later in his career he would create magnificent enamelled, silvered and gilt bronzes, combined with exotic marbles. These dazzling sculptures created a sensation, being praised by some critics for their novelty and genuius, whilst being damned by others as industrial decoration.

The present bust, in being subtly tinted, references a more deliberately classicizing approach to polychromed sculpture. The golden tint to the girl’s hair and the light rouge applied to her corset are closely reminiscent of John Gibson’s celebrated neoclassical Tinted Venus of 1851-56, which had been exhibited in Rome in 1854. Gibson’s Tinted Venus was undoubtedly influenced by the fashionable contemporary theory that the Ancients merely tinted small parts of their statuary, such as the lips and hair. Cordier likewise appears to have followed this theory, opting to portray his modern Roman Venus in a manner similar to that of his ancient predecessors. It is seems possible that he may even have been influenced by Gibson’s model.

The present marble is beautifully carved. Observe the superb floral patterns adorning the girl’s belt, the soft, crushed, folds of her chemise, and the smooth, polished, skin of her flesh. The combination of such excellence in the quality of carving, together with the delicate hints of colour, serve to create one of Cordier’s most subtle and charming ethnographic busts.

RELATED LITERATURE
A. Blühm, The Colour of Sculpture 1840-1919, exh. cat. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, and Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, 1996, pp. 170-173, nos. 47-49; L. de Margerie, '"The most beautiful Negro is not the one who looks most like us' - Cordier, 1862', L. de Margerie and É. Papet (eds.), Charles Cordier (1827-1905), sculpteur, l'autre et l'ailleurs [Facing the Other. Charles Cordier (1827-1905)], exh. cat. Musée d'Orsay, Paris; Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Quebec City; Dahesh Museum of Art, New York, 2004, pp. 13-49; R. Panzanelli, E. Schmidt and K. Lapatin,The Color of Life. Polychromy in Sculpture From Antiquity to the Present, exh. cat. J. Paul Getty Museum, 2008, pp. 160-165, no. 31-33