Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse

Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse was one of the most important and innovative sculptors of nineteenth-century France. During his long career at the Paris Salon and beyond, Carrier-Belleuse was responsible for important public monuments, as well as creating decorative sculpture for a diverse clientele. Carrier-Belleuse’s prolific workshop became an important training ground for younger sculptors, notably Auguste Rodin, who acted as the master’s assistant between 1864 and 1870.

The present bronze, entitled ‘La Cigale’, depicts a young woman playing a mandolin. The subject is a reinterpretation of Jean de la Fontaine’s retelling of Aesop’s fable of the grasshopper and the ant. In this famed tale, while the grasshopper spends the summer singing and enjoying the sun, the ant works diligently to store food for the winter. When the cold arrives, the grasshopper finds herself starving and appeals to the ant for help, only to be reproached for her idleness and turned away. During the 19th century this fable was reinterpreted by several sculptors who recast the grasshopper as a beautiful young woman who sang the summer away on her mandolin.

Carrier-Belleuse offered a terracotta La Cigale at his sales of 1883 and 1887. Another version of this model was sold in these rooms on the 13th of July 2022 as lot 49.

RELATED LITERATURE

J. Hargrove and G. Grandjean, Carrier-Belleuse. Le maître de Rodin, exh. cat. Palais de Compiègne, Paris, 2014; S. Lami, Dictionnaire des Sculpteurs de l'Ecole Française au dix-neuvième siècle, Paris 1914, (ed.) 1970, vol. 1, p. 283