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Honoré Daumier

Félix Barthe, model c. 1832/1835, cast 1929/1930

West Building, Ground Floor — Gallery G8

Medium

bronze

Dimensions

overall: 16.5 x 14.6 x 13 cm (6 1/2 x 5 3/4 x 5 1/8 in.)

Credit Line

Rosenwald Collection

Accession Number

1943.3.5

Artists / Makers

Honoré Daumier (artist) French, 1808 - 1879

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Inscription

stamped in wax positive on lower left shoulder: M.L.G. [Maurice Le Garrec]; incised on bottom rim at front right: 3/25 C; cold-stamped inside, within incised circle: 3/25

Provenance

Sold 1 July 1930 through (Charles Sessler, Philadelphia) to Lessing Julius Rosenwald, Jenkintown, Pennsylvania;[1] gift 1943 to NGA.

[1] Charles Philipon, editor of La Caricature, having commissioned and paid Daumier to execute maquettes for a gallery of busts to be printed as lithographs, owned the clay figures outright, and they remained with his family after he died in 1862. They were purchased in 1927 from Philipon's descendants by dealer-publisher Maurice Le Garrec, who commissioned the Barbedienne foundry in Paris to cast the full set of thirty-six figures, twelve busts at a time. The first set was made available by subscription in 1929-1930, the second set apparently in early 1940, and the final set by around 1950. Lessing Rosenwald purchased each of his three groups of twelve shortly after they were made available. The Barbedienne foundry returned the orginal clays and plaster molds to Le Garrec's widow when it ceased operation in the early 1950s. Subsequently Madame Le Garrec commissioned three full sets of the busts from another foundry, Valsuani, and the clays and molds were destroyed when this edition was completed in March 1965. (See the complete discussion of the busts by Suzanne Glover Lindsay in the NGA systematic catalogue, European Sculpture of the Nineteenth Century, Washington, D.C., 2000: 119-125.)

Associated Names

Rosenwald, Lessing Julius
Sessler, Charles

Exhibition History

1958: Bench and Bar and The Realm of the Law, Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, California, 1958, no. 12.

1960: Honoré Daumier, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1960, no cat.

1969: Daumier Sculpture: A Critical and Comparative Study, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1969, no. 3b, repro.

1974: Nineteenth-Century Sculpture, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1974, unnumbered checklist.

1976: Arts and Crafts in Detroit: The Movement, the Society, the School, Detroit Institute of Arts, 1976-1977, no. 254.

1979: Honoré Daumier 1808-1879, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1979, no. 8, repro.

1999: Daumier: 1808-1879, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris; The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., 1999-2000, no. 12b, repro., as Barthe (shown only in Washington).

Bibliography

1952: Gobin, Maurice. Daumier Sculpteur, 1808-1879. Geneva, 1952: no. 5.

1965: Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 150, as one of The Deputies, complete set of 36 bronze busts.

1994: Sculpture: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1994: 51, repro.

2000: Butler, Ruth, and Suzanne Glover Lindsay, with Alison Luchs, Douglas Lewis, Cynthia J. Mills, and Jeffrey Weidman. European Sculpture of the Nineteenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 2000: 131-133, color repro.