Attributed to Pierre Julien (1731 - 1804), circa 1795

The theme of maternal love found fertile ground in pre-revolutionary France. In Émile ou De l’Éducation, published in 1762, Rousseau condemned the practice of placing children with wet nurses and promoted breastfeeding. For the philosopher, beyond a new perspective on early childhood, the precariousness of which was a terrible fate since nearly one in two children did not reach the age of five, it was a question of ‘reforming morals’ (Book II). Painters and sculptors became the spokespeople for the ideas of the Enlightenment, and maternal love became a central theme, standing out from genre scenes due to the moral significance of its message. The Revolution appropriated the subject and made the maternal figure, the cornerstone of the education of future citizens, a model of republican virtue.

Terracotta and biscuit porcelain, which allowed for wider distribution, became the materials of choice for representations of mothers and their children. These compositions, intimate in appearance, multiplied; most of them were allegorical. The subjects of the Sèvres Manufactory evolved in this direction. Boizot, who took over the management of the sculpture workshops there in 1774, created several models based on the maternal figure, such as Piété filiale (1794-96) (cf. T. Préaud, G. Scherf, op. cit., p. 272). In the final days of the Ancien Régime, the theme of family was already central in the Naissance du Dauphin, based on a model by Augustin Pajou (1781), naturally in a political approach of dynastic continuity (cf. ibidem., p. 328). During the Revolution, the allegorical figure of Charity, one of the cardinal virtues of Christianity, whose iconography derives from that of motherhood, became secularised. In Nature (1794), also by Boizot for Sèvres, a seated woman breastfeeds two children; she is barely distinguishable from a representation of Christian Charity (cf. ibidem., pp. 272 and 276).

The two present terracotta groups, undoubtedly by the same hand, are excellent representations of motherhood according to Enlightenment principles. In the first, the mother is seated and holds a baby at her breast, while with her left hand she holds a cup from which a child seated at her feet drinks; her face turned to her left, she looks at a third, older child clinging to her. In the second, the mother, also seated, joins her right hand to those held out to her by her two children. She looks at the eldest, pensively, her head resting in the palm of her other hand. The composition of the first group is similar to a terracotta by Pierre Julien, Charité in the form of a woman breastfeeding and giving drink to children, exhibited at the Salon of 1795 (no. 1045), certainly preparatory to an unfinished group commissioned by the financier Jean-Joseph de Laborde in 1792, which was to represent ‘a woman with two children, one at the breast and the other a little older, to whom the woman will give a drink’ (cf. G. Grandjean, G. Scherf, op. cit., p. 50). The Charité (Charity) from the 1795 Salon may be one of the two terracottas of the same subject exhibited in the Cailleux Gallery in 1934 (no. 146 or no. 147; cf. ibidem, pp. 42 and 43, figs. 25 and 26). Also in 1795, one should mention a plaster cast ‘proportion de nature’ (life-size), also by Pierre Julien, entitled Tendresse maternelle (maternal tenderness) (no. 1041; whereabout unknown).

In these groups, we find the energetic marks of the tool and the imprint of the fingers that quickly modelled them. They are comparable to some of Pierre Julien's more lively terracottas, such as his bozzetto for the Gladiateur mourant exhibited at the Toulouse Salon de l'Académie des Beaux-Arts (1791), then in the Pujol sale, also in Toulouse, on 7 and 8 March 1864 (lot 198), and in the Marcel Zambaux sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, on 21 and 22 November 1922 (lot 135). The children's round faces framed by large curls and their bodies, which have retained the roundness of early childhood, are comparable to the child clinging to Saint Geneviève's cloak in the relief at the Louvre (Sainte Geneviève rendant la vue à sa mère, circa 1776, inv. RF 4100).

As confirmed by Pierre Julien's post-mortem inventory, the sculptor treated the theme of motherhood on several occasions. The model for Tendresse maternelle (Maternal Tenderness), exhibited at the 1795 Salon, is still in the sculptor's studio, described as ‘A plaster group composed of two figures, a motherhood subject, executed life-size’ (cf. ibidem, p. 149). Among the works described in his studio at the Louvre are also ‘Three groups, on the theme of Motherhood’, followed by ‘Three more, women and children’ (cf. A. Pascal, op. cit., p. 149). The present Charity and Maternal Love could potentially be identified as two of these works.

RELATED LITERATURE

A. Pascal, Pierre Julien sculpteur (1731-1804). Sa vie et son œuvre, Paris, 1904;

Exposition Esquisses, maquettes, projets et ébauches de l'École française du XVIIIe siècle : peintures et sculptures, exh. cat. Galerie Cailleux, Paris, 1934;

M. P. Worley, Pierre Julien. Sculptor to Queen Marie-Antoinette, New York, 2003, pp. 37-41;

G. Grandjean, G. Scherf (eds.), Pierre Julien 1731-1804, exh. cat. Musée Crozatier, Puy-en-Velay, 2004;

T. Préaud, G. Scherf, La Manufacture des Lumières. La sculpture à Sèvres de Louis XV à la Révolution, exh. cat. Cité de la Céramique, Sèvres, 2015.