100 - Nach Honoré Daumier

Nach Honoré Daumier After Honoré Daumier Bust of Louis XIV (L'Homme à Large Perruque) Circa 1846/1850 Bronze. Height 43.5 cm. Mounted on black marble base (15 x 15.2 x 14.9 cm). Foundry mark "CIRE C. VALSUANI PERDUE" verso on lower edge and with hammered numbering. Cast 2/8. - With greenish-black patina. – Minor abrasions, small missing areas on lower edge of base. Gobin 59 Provenance Robert Gore Rifkind Collection, Los Angeles; Private collection, United Kingdom Exhibitions I.a. Cambridge MA 1969 (Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University), Daumier Sculpture. A Critical and Comparative Study, cat. no. 43c., with two ill. Literature Jeanne L. Wasserman, Daumier Sculpture. A Critical and Comparative Study, Cambridge MA 1969, p. 198-203, ill. 43c on p. 201f. (this cast); for original and later casts cf. Maurice Gobin, Daumier Sculpteur (1808-1879), Geneva 1952, p. 58 and 288, no. 59, ill. 289ff.; Galerie Charles et André Bailly (ed.): Tableaux de Maitres, Paris 1990, p. 12, ill. 13 Around 1846-1850, Daumier had created a bust in clay that served as the basis for this bronze. From the late 1950s through the early 1960s, Valsuani cast the sculpture in an edition of 8 (plus two trial casts). In this bust, Daumier depicted the king with subtle features, yet in a slightly caricatured — and certainly not idealized — manner. Daumier did not conceal the somewhat fleshy neck and slightly protruding lower jaw of King Louis XIV of France (1638–1715). Another piece from this edition, from the collection of Samuel and Marie Louise Rosenthal, is held at the Art Institute of Chicago. There is also a cast in the Hellwig Collection for the Städel Verein in Frankfurt.