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At first glance, this bronze sculpture resembles a lump of clay loosely formed into the head and shoulders of a man. In this photograph, his shoulders are squared toward us as he looks to our right. His hair is pushed forward in rope-like spikes over deep-set eye sockets. He has a sharp, thin nose, and his lips purse in an exaggerated scowl. He seems to wear a cravat nestled into the high lapels of his coat. The surface of the bronze is mostly brown except where the edges and ridges are gold, as if having been burnished through handling.

Honoré Daumier

Dr. Clément-François-Victor-Gabriel Prunelle, model c. 1832/1835, cast 1929/1930

West Building, Ground Floor — Gallery G8

Medium

bronze

Dimensions

overall: 13 x 14.9 x 10.5 cm (5 1/8 x 5 7/8 x 4 1/8 in.)

Credit Line

Rosenwald Collection

Accession Number

1943.3.8

Artists / Makers

Honoré Daumier (artist) French, 1808 - 1879

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
Read our full Open Access policy for images .

Inscription

stamped in the wax positive on lower left shoulder, in incised circle: M.L.G [Maurice Le Garrec]; incised on the bottom rim at front center: 3/30 D; cold-stamped inside, front center: 3/30

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: Honoré Daumier, Anniversary Exhibition, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1958, no. 8, repro.

1958: Honoré Daumier: Exhibition of Prints, Drawings, Watercolors, Paintings, and Sculpture, Los Angeles County Museum, 1958, no. 227.

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

1961: Impressionism in Sculpture, traveling exhibition organized by The American Federation of Arts, 9 venues, 1961-1962.

1964: Lithography and Sculpture of Daumier, Realist and Satirist, The Hill School, Pottstown, Pennsylvania, 1964, unnumbered brochure.

1969: Daumier Sculpture: A Critical and Comparative Study, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1969, no. 28c, repro.

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

1979: Honoré Daumier 1808-1879, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1979, no. 9, repro.

1980: The Romantics to Rodin: French Nineteenth-Century Sculpture from North American Collections, Los Angeles County Mus. of Art; Minneapolis Inst. of Arts; Detroit Inst. of Arts; Indianapolis Mus. of Art; Mus. of Fine Arts, Boston, 1980-1981, no. 87.

1999: Daumier: 1808-1879, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris; The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., 1999-2000, no. 38b, repro., as Prunelle (shown only in Washington).

Bibliography

1952: Gobin, Maurice. Daumier Sculpteur, 1808-1879. Geneva, 1952: no. 8.

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: 58, 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: 178-180, color repro.