Charles henri joseph cordier biography of abraham

Biography

French sculptor. In his words, "Because beauty is not the province of privileged race, I give to the world of art the idea of the universality of beauty. 64 (ill. For a different version in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Troyes, Cordier used red enamel for the blouse, which he matched by painting part of the marble cloak red and gold.

Open Access data and public domain images are available for unrestricted commercial and noncommercial use without permission or fee.

To request images under copyright and other restrictions, please use this Image Request form.

We continue to research and examine historical and cultural context for objects in The Met collection.

205, nos. But Cordier was the most consistent in combining colored sculpture and ethnographic subjects.

Cordier’s most lavish multimedia busts of ethnic people found favor with collectors at the highest social level, for example, Napoléon III and Queen Victoria, who were no doubt drawn to them because of their own colonialist interests. He trained at the Petite Ecole (Ecole Spéciale de Dessin et de Mathématiques) in Paris, then with François Rude.

The Met's Open Access API is where creators and researchers can connect to the The Met collection.

See also the photograph by Léon Cordier of his father’s stand at the Exposition Universelle of 1867, showing a similar pedestal supporting Arab Sheik of Cairo (in Facing the Other 2004, p. It is now housed at The Walters Art Museum.

In 1851, Queen Victoria bought a bronze of it at the Great Exhibition of London.

From 1851 to 1866, he served as the official sculptor of Paris's National History Museum, creating a series of spectacularly lifelike busts for their new ethnographic gallery (now housed in the Musee de l'Homme, Paris).

Cordier did not only use 'exotic' models: in the course of his ethnographic work he depicted European types from different parts of France and beyond.

As he wrote in 1864, "Polychrome sculpture is not made for gardens, but for interiors that are already lavish." [11]

Footnotes

1. 28.

11. Similar pedestals were chosen for The Goat Tender and Negro of the Sudan (Durand-Révillon and Margerie 2004, p. It is the individual in whom are united such forms and traits, and a face that reflects with harmony and balance the essential moral and intellectual character of the Ethiopian race." [10]

At the time of their purchase, the Cercle des Phocéens acquired pedestals for the busts, evidently based on designs by Charles-François Rossigneux.

183, no. [7] The Jewish Woman of Algiers was paired after 1866 with The Arab Sheik of Cairo, in examples in the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, and in two now-lost pairs.[8] By contrast, the Metropolitan’s group presents a same-​sex pair representing different countries and races of the African continent. Antoine-Chrysostome Quatremère de Quincy’s reconsideration of the fifth-century-b.c.

70, 71).