Jacques-Auguste FAUGINET (Paris, 1809 - Fauginet,... - Lot 63 - Ader

Lot 63
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Estimation :
15000 - 20000 EUR
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Result : 57 600EUR
Jacques-Auguste FAUGINET (Paris, 1809 - Fauginet,... - Lot 63 - Ader
Jacques-Auguste FAUGINET (Paris, 1809 - Fauginet, 1847) Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870), 1831 Bust in plaster with a bronze imitation patina Signed : " A. Fauginet. F" under the right shoulder H. 64 cm (Some slight wear to the patina) Provenance : - Jean-Baptiste Porcher (1792-1864), friend of Alexandre Dumas, former wigmaker, chef de claque, and later show ticket merchant. - By descent until today. Exhibition: Paris, Salon of 1831, part of no. 2217 (Bustes, same number). Bibliography : - A. Tardieu, Annales du musée et de l'école moderne des beaux-arts. Salon de 1831, Paris, 1831, p. 262 ("M. Fauginet exposed a bust of M. Alex. Dumas"). - A. Dumas, Mes Mémoires, Paris, T. IV, 1867, p. 235. This rare and historical portrait is the work of the romantic sculptor Jacques-Auguste Fauginet. If it is more particularly through his animal sculpture that Fauginet, who died too young, is known to us, his bust of Alexandre Dumas executed in 1831 is probably his masterpiece. In 1831, Dumas was only twenty-eight years old and still a young author of vaudevilles and historical dramas for the theater; this work is therefore one of the very first portraits of the immense writer in the making. Fauginet offers us a bust that combines the neo-classicism of a hermesis cut-out with an innovative and daring portrait whose free and fiery hair announces the impulses of a romanticism that only really emerged for sculpture at the 1836 Salon. This plaster belonged to Jean-Baptiste Porcher, a close friend of both artists. This theater clerk advanced money to playwrights in exchange for tickets to shows that he sold. Having rendered great services to many aspiring authors, he even served as a model for Balzac's character of the chef de claque Braulard in Les Illusions perdues, (1837-1843). In his memoirs, Dumas quotes both the bust and his friend Porcher: "Also, for my part, I am grateful to Porcher (...), and, when I go today to Porcher's, I am happy and proud to see my portrait reproduced three times, in bust, in pastel, in medal, next to the portrait of Porcher's children.
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