Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse

This terracotta is one of the works that Carrier-Belleuse would have described as ‘genre de Clodion’. He unabashedly used this turn of phrase in reference to some of his work. To further allude to the eighteenth-century master sculptor, Carrier added attributes for which Clodion was famous: a tambourine, thyrsus and torch. However, as June Hargrove explains, Carrier's sculpture ‘generates an earthly eroticism more brutal than Clodion's gossamer atmosphere.’

RELATED LITERATURE

J. Hargrove and G. Grandjean, Carrier-Belleuse: Le maître de Rodin, exh. cat., Palais de Compiègne, Paris, 2014, pp. 108-109, nos. 74 and 75; J. Hargrove, The Life and Work of Albert Carrier-Belleuse, New York and London, 1977 pp. 234-5