Lot 11
  • 11

Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier

Estimate
30,000 - 50,000 GBP
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Description

  • Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier
  • Jeune Femme Pariote (young woman of paros)
  • signed and dated: CORDIER PARIS 1859
  • white marble on grey veined marble socle and base

Literature

L. de Margerie & E. Papet, Facing the Other: Charles Cordier (1827-1905) Ethnographic Sculptor, ex. cat. Musée d'Orsay, Paris, 2004, cat. no. 318, p. 181

Catalogue Note

"Greece possesses the most beautiful marbles that can be used for statuary, as well as the most elegant and most beautiful natural human types"
Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier, 1858

In 1851 Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier was given the post of ethnographic sculptor to the Musée d'Histoire Naturelle. He spent the following 15 years in the rôle recording national types and costumes through a series of sculptures distinguished by a unique attention to racial and cultural nuances. His illustrious collectors included Napoleon III, Empress Eugénie, Baron James de Rothschild and Queen Victoria who treasured Cordier's distinctive works for their sheer opulence and beauty - a beauty based in particularity and difference rather than on a generic ideal.

During his years at the Musée d'Histoire Naturelle Cordier made government sponsored tours of Algeria, Greece and Egypt. He left for Greece on 16th April 1858 with an allowance of 700 francs a month and letters of introduction from the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He travelled for eight months taking in Athens, Attica, the Pelponese and the Cyclades. His mission was to inspect the marble quarries which furnished the stone for the legendary sculptors of ancient Greece and to record contemporary Greeks in sculpture.

The island of Paros in the Cyclades had been a source of pure white marble since ancient times. Some of the greatest antique sculptures, such as the Venus de Medici and the Victory of Samothrace, both in the Louvre Museum, were carved from this stone and it was a natural port-of-call on Cordier's tour. Cordier spent two months on the island and his enthusiasm for the stone and its potential for French sculpture was such that he compared it favourably with Italian marbles emphasising its 'capacity for a broader, more accomplished and more vital finish.' He purchased a quarry on behalf of the French government and brought vast quantities of the stone back to France with him on his return to Paris.

Cordier frequently used this Parian marble in his depiction of Greeks, especially in his sculptures of natives of the island. This marble Young Woman of Paros is one of the rarest and most lovely of Cordier's Greek models. The sculptor encompasses the strength and beauty of his subject in the wide cheekbones and column of throat. The frank gaze is accompanied by the delicately chiselled collar bone, dimples and creases in the throat, to infuse a sense of vitality and realism. The brocade and lace of the local costume are described in detail as is the dressing of the hair with its looped braids and rolling curls.

The present marble is one of only two versions of the model which the artist carved. The other version was partially painted and gilded. Its present location is unknown. The model was also reworked to create an allegory of Poetry, now in a private collection, Chicago.

RELATED LITERATURE
L. de Margerie & E. Papet, Facing the Other: Charles Cordier (1827-1905) Ethnographic Sculptor, ex. cat. Musée d'Orsay, Paris, 2004, cat. nos. 318- 319 & 429  p. 181 ; E. Papet & M. Vigli, 'The Trip to Greece, April - November 1858', in L. de Margerie & E. Papet, pp. 87 - 91