Étienne-Henry Dumaige

This sumptuous pair of bronzes depicting Roman dancers epitomises the 19th-century fascination with the Eternal City's mythical allure. Clad in all'antica drapes and relishing in their music-making - one playing the cymbals, the other the triangle - the present figures invoke the sensuous revelry of ancient dancers as recounted in Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1860 novel The Marble Faun (ch. X, 'The Sylvan Dance'), which is set in a fantastical Italy. Beautifully cast, the bronzes are distinguished by their attractive variegated patinas.

The son of a gilder, Dumaige was a pupil of Feuchère and Dumont. He exhibited at the Paris Salon from 1863 to 1886, specialising in allegorical and genre subjects, as well as Orientalist fantasies. He is the author of several public monuments in France, including a statue of François Rabelais in Tours, and a statue of Pierre-Antoine Berryer which adorns one of the façades of the Hôtel de Ville, Paris.

RELATED LITERATURE

S. Lami, Dictionnaire des Sculpteurs de l'école française au dix-neuvième siècle, vol. 2, Paris, 1916, pp. 238-239