Alfred Boucher (Ovin 1850 - 1934 Aix-les-Bains)

Volubilis is one of Alfred Boucher's best known and most celebrated compositions. It's naissance began in 1894 with a full figure bronze, which Boucher had produced for the funerary monument of Ferdinand Barbedienne, the famed bronzier, at the Père Lachaise cemetery. Two years later, in 1896, the sculptor presented a marble version of the model under the title Volubilis in the Salon des Champs-Elysées, and another example was exhibited in the Salon of 1897 under the title Aux champs. These works were met with great success, with one observer noting “Boucher’s Volubilis has inspired a legion of fervent admirers. One delights in the chaste grace and ingenuous delicacy of this high-relief figure of a young girl standing out against a background of tall forest, carved with rare finesse in solid marble. It was a daring challenge to treat, without lapsing into sentimentality, a subject of such perilous nature and such subtle genre.”¹

Encouraged by this success, the sculptor then produced several variations of the model, always in marble - he chose to do away with the forest background, creating a full figure, three quarter figure, a bust form, as seen here, as well as a last version, which features only her face. In each version, the woman appears to emerge from the raw, unworked marble. The delicate contours of her profile stand in striking contrast to the rough, barely hewn stone, a juxtaposition that heightens the softness of her features and the subtle texture of her skin.

¹H. Houssaye, The Salon of 1896, One Hundred Plates in Photogravure, Paris 1896 p. 58.