Christian Daniel Rauch

Mr & Mrs John Howey, Florida, acquired before 1927 for Howey Mansion finished in 1927;

Mrs Marvel Zona (d. 2015), acquired in 1984;

Private Collection, USA

The present model, known as Boy with a Bowl, Charity, or The Camillo, was first created by Rauch in 1835 and commissioned in marble by the Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna of Russia. The first version is now in the collection of the Hermitage, St Petersburg. It is thought that at least five versions of the widely admired sculpture were created in Carrara from a plaster model sent by Rauch, but that he finished each piece himself.

Working on a project in his local church in the town of Bad Arolsen, Rauch paired this piece with two other works of a similar scale: Faith and Hope. Other versions of Boy with a Bowl were commissioned by King Wilhelm, along with a pair of figures of Boy with a Bowl and Boy with a Book for his godson, Albert, Prince of Wales. Sadly, this pair was lost in the fire at Windsor Castle in 1992. Another example is in the collection of Lord Lansdowne at Bowood House in Wiltshire, England.

A contemporary of the famous neoclassical sculptors Antonio Canova and Bertel Thorvaldsen, Christian Daniel Rauch began his artistic education at the tender age of fourteen, when he was apprenticed to court sculptor Friedrich Valentin (1752-1819). However, after the untimely death of his brother, he was forced to accept a position as a valet at the Prussian court of Friedrich Wilhelm II to sustain his widowed mother. Although it pained him to give up his artistic profession, the move turned out to be fortuitous: the King died in the same year, and his successor, Friedrich Wilhelm III, became the most avid supporter of his artistic talents. In 1803, he was granted a pension, in order to finish his education and completely dedicate himself to sculpture. Rauch had the opportunity to go to Italy on a Grand Tour in 1805, which he described in a letter to his mother as the 'most beautiful trip in the world' (von Simson, op. cit., p. 15). Due to the contacts he made on this tour, he spent the next decade travelling back and forth to Italy, where he befriended Canova and Thorvaldsen, and developed his distinctive neoclassical style. His first official large assignment did not come until 1811, when he was commissioned to make the funerary monument of Queen Luise of Prussia. Returning permanently to Berlin after 1818, his reputation as an excellent portraitist now firmly established, he became one of the most desired sculptors for busts and statues of military officials, aristocrats and monarchs, and received commissions from numerous European royal families.  

RELATED LITERATURE

J. von Simson, Christian Daniel Rauch: Oeuvre-Katalog, Berlin, 1996, pp. 353-355, no. 223