Alfred Boucher

Alfred Boucher came from a modest family background. His parents were employed as a gardener and cook for the sculptor Marius Ramus. The young Alfred completed his first clay sketches in the sculptor's studio and Ramus soon introduced him to the well-known sculptor Paul Dubois in the nearby town of Nogent-sur-Seine. In 1868 Boucher won a bursary from the town to complete his studies in Paris at the École des Beaux-Arts. Travels in Italy further informed his art.

Boucher is well known for his evocative marble nudes. Models such as the Volubilis and the L'Hirondelle Blessée are enduringly popular and appear in a number of variations. Some models were produced in small editions. However, the present model is almost certainly unique and unedited. The treatment of the block of stone suggests that it may be a work carved in "taille directe". Boucher's contemporary Clément Alibert confirmed that the sculptor practised this technique in which the artist himself carves from the block without the aid of a practicien or the use of a pointing machine. As Alibert wrote 'Often he attacked the immaculate block of Carrara, and from under his magisterial chisel the figures he created emerged from the marble.'

The motif of the figure escaping the rough hewn rock is a central to Boucher's art, and it is a self-conscious reference to the work of the great sculptor Michelangelo. The reference is even more direct in this marble as the nymph mirrors the pose of Michelangelo's Dying Slave which Boucher must have studied intensively at the Louvre. The influence of Michelangelo was noted by contemporary critics, such as Hippolyte Parigot who wrote in 1891: 'there is something of the Antique in him, and also of Michelangelo, for the vigour and energy of the chisel.'

The contrast between flesh and rock in the present marble is particularly vivid and the quality of the carving is exceptional even within the artist's own oeuvre. The tender and life-like treatment of the surface of the skin is astonishing and the carefully described details of the hands and feet testify to the sculptor's masterful grasp of anatomy.

RELATED LITERATURE
Jacques Piette, Alfred Boucher 1850-1934 "sculpteur-humaniste", ex. cat. Musée Paul Dubois-Alfred Boucher, Nogent-sur-Seine, 2000, pp. 8-16