- 128
Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier French, 1827-1905
Description
- Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier
- Les Époux Chinois (a pair of busts of a married couple)
- each signed: Cordier.
- bronze, rich dark brown patina, on shaped verde antico socles with revolving tops
Catalogue Note
Originally exhibited in plaster at the Salon of 1852 as Epoux Chinois, Cordier presented his pair of busts in bronze the following year. From 1860 these bronzes were put on view in the Galerie Anthropologique of the Musée d'Histoire Naturelle.
Cordier never travelled to China, but used members of a Chinese family resident in Paris as his models. In the original larger busts, Cordier shows the man leaning on a balustrade, smoking an opium pipe and with trellis behind him, while the woman similarly leans on a balustrade with a fan in her left hand and a pagoda behind her. Both are elaborately decorated with silvering and enamel. Another pair of bronzes of the present models sold in these rooms as lot 55, 20 November 1997.
RELATED LITERATURE Revillon, p.183