Charles-Auguste Fraikin Belgian, 1817-1893

New research has conclusively identified the sculptor of this charming bust of La fée  de l'eaux as Charles-Auguste Fraikin. This is confirmed by an identical plaster version (no.33) in the Fraikin museum in his native town of Herentals.  A closely related pendant bust entitled La fée de bois - De bos fee (The wood fairy) is also in the Fraikin Museum (no.31).

Fraikin’s masterpiece is his group of L’Amour captif, first exhibited at the Brussels Salon in 1848 (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Brussels).  The head of the running Venus looking up towards Cupid precariously balancing on her shoulders is extremely close in conception to the present fairy, as is the physiognomy of other mythological and Ideal works such as Le Sommeil and Psyche appellant l’amour à son secours.

One reviewer of the 1848 Salon praised Fraikin’s work for its ‘conception pleine de grace idéale  et d’un charme suave’, a description which exactly matches this bust of  La fée  de l'eaux .

Related literature
Van Lennep 1990, vol.2, pp.399-401