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7 juillet 2016

Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier (1827 - 1905, French), Chinoise (Bust of a Chinese Woman)

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Lot 45. Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier (1827 - 1905, French), Chinoise (Bust of a Chinese Woman), bronze, gilt, silvered and black patina, and partially enamelled, 97cm., 38 1/8 in. overall. Estimate 200,000 — 300,000 GBP. Lot sold 245,000 GBP. Photo Sotheby's

ProvenanceMost probably that recorded in a photograph in the 'JL Album', and subsequently photographed in Cordier's Paris studio, 1857, and in the Cordier salon, Nice, 1883

LiteratureC. Cordier, Sculptures ethnographiques, Marbres et bronzes d'après divers types de races humaines, Paris, n.d., circa 1857 (probably);
L. de Margerie and É. Papet (eds.), 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, p. 156, no. 109 (probably).

NotesAlong with the Chinois (Chinese Man), the Chinoise is one of the defining masterpieces of 19th-century ethnographic sculpture. Just four casts are known of the present model, with only the present bronze and one other incorporating the evocative Chinese pagoda. Marrying the innovative technique of galvanoplasty (electrotyping) and enamelling, these extraordinary models caused a sensation when first exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1853. Cordier's focus on the individual beauty of the sitter, combined with a dazzling polychromatic approach, both thrilled and scandalised critics, and resulted in a bust which stands as a testament to the 19th-century European fascination with other peoples, as well as the burgeoning love of colour in sculpture.

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. Whilst some theorists published writings espousing the superiority of white Europeans over blacks, Cordier displayed a palpable sympathy for people of other races in his ethnographic busts. Chiefly concerned with the search for beauty in all 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. 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).

The Chinoise was the result of an encounter with a wealthy Chinese family who had travelled to Europe in the early 1850s. The subject of the male portrait Chung-Ataï, and his wife, represented in the present bust, were the subjects of an article in the newspaper L'Illustration from 1851:

'M. Chung-Ataï, a gentleman of means of the Celestial Kingdom, was presented to the Queen of England at Osborne House and was accorded the most gracious welcome. His family is composed of three persons: his two wives, Suen-Ahup and Yung-Achoy, and his sister-in-law, A-Hoo. I am certain that he will be pleased to welcome you, dear readers, 53 Rue Neuve-Vivienne next door to the tea merchant. Furthermore, next Saturday L'illustration promises to bring you a portrait of all the members of this remarkable family, complete with explanatory text.' (L'Illustration, 1851, as quoted in de Margerie, op. cit., p. 21).

On viewing the portrait described in the article (see fig. 1), it is clear that the model for the present bust is the lady standing in profile on the farthest right, which is almost certainly one of Chung-Ataï's wives, Suen-Ahup or Yung-Achoy. That Cordier should choose to portray members of an affluent Chinese family who had travelled to Europe to be received as important guests is typical of his approach. The sculptor was, as he stated on numerous occasions, solely interested in portraying beautiful individuals from different races. He appears never to have been associated with the various exhibitions of world peoples staged in London and Paris throughout the 19th century, which presented people from different continents as curiosities to be stared at, in an unpleasant circus-type spectacle. In contrast, in both his life and works, Cordier displayed a sympathy with those he was tasked with representing, to the extent that, when he visited Algiers in 1856, he chose to live alongside native Algerians and not with the French colonists. Indeed, in the case of the Chinois and Chinoise, Cordier chose to portray people who he would have had personal contact with as individuals in their own right and not as exhibits to be objectified. As Laure de Margerie wrote in the seminal 2004 Cordier exhibition catalogue, 'Cordier always preferred individual contact and eschewed the crowd' (op. cit., p. 21). Interestingly, we find a hint at the reactions of the Chinese visitors to their French hosts in a remark made by the columnist Philippe Busoni who complained that '[European] visitors evoke not the slightest interest [from the Chinese ladies], and it is apparent that they are already quite blasé about Europe' (quoted in de Margerie, op. cit., p. 21).

Engraving_Chinese_family

‘Famille chinoise à Paris’,in L’Illustration, Journal Universal, 16-23 October 1851.

Cordier's decision to portray the wealthy Chung-Ataï and his family afforded the sculptor the chance to represent elaborate and sumptuous costumes, which he enhanced with the use of the novel galvanoplasty technique, a metal-making method which also enabled the easy fusing of gold to bronze, and the venerable craft of enamelling, concurrently a nod to Chinese virtuosity and to the Limoges tradition in France. This polychromatic approach was both in tune with the wider zeitgeist and is characteristic of Cordier's sculpture. Following his namesake, the French-born Roman Baroque sculptor, Nicolas Cordier (1567-1612), he sought to reintroduce colour into sculpture using different materials and new technologies at a time when it was becoming increasingly clear that the celebrated masterpieces of Greek and Roman art had been painted. Cordier's use of colour was not to everyone's taste however. The critic Claude Vignon was incensed by what she believed to be the twin evils of racial/ cultural equality and gaudy polychromy enshrined in the Chinois and Chinoise, exclaiming 'what is less art, and what appears supremely out of place at the Salon of 1852 [sic], are these busts done in the manner of characters on Chinese screens. Sculpture may bend a bit to accommodate fantasy, but not to this degree. We will absolutely not determine whether or not the Chinese are more or less authentic, or whether they are well or poorly executed. To appreciate these would be to accept them as works of art, and this we will never do (as quoted by de Margerie, op. cit., p. 29).

The present bronze is rare: only four arm-length casts are known, with only one other including the pagoda. It is likely that the present bronze is that listed in the catalogue raisonné as having been photographed in the artist's Paris studio in 1857 and in Nice in 1883 (op. cit., no. 109). Given that the gilt bronze and enamelled patina compares with the version of the Chinois in the Art Gallery of Hamilton, Canada (catalogue raisonné, no. 108), it is likely that the two were conceived as pendants. There is a pair of bronze versions without gilding in the Musée de l'Homme Paris (inv. nos. 27050-1977-206 and 27057-1977-213), whilst the pair exhibited at the Salon of 1853 is now in a private collection (catalogue raisonné, nos. 106 and 107), and a third pair is also recorded as being in a private collection (catalogue raisonné, nos. 101 and 111).

The sale of this important and beautiful bronze presents collectors with a rare opportunity to acquire one of the masterpieces of Cordier's oeuvre, and an examplar of French 19th-century ethnographic sculpture.

RELATED LITERATURE
L. de Margerie, ' "The most beautiful Negro is not the one who looks most like us" - Cordier, 1862, in L. de Margerie and É. Papet (eds.), 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. 13-50; Édouard Papet, ' "To have the courage of his polychromy:" Charles Corder and the Sculpture of the Second Empire,' in L. de Margerie and É. Papet (eds.), 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. 51-82

Sotheby's. Old Master Sculpture and Works of Art Including Splendours from a Mantuan Palazzo, London, 05 Jul 2016

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