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The Leicester Galleries Ltd
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Medium
Brown patina bronze
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Signed/Inscribed/Dated
Inscribed Bonheur
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Dimensions
12.00cm wide
8.00cm high
4.00cm deep
(4.72 inches wide 3.15 inches high 1.57 inches deep)
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Description / Expertise
Isidore Jules Bonheur, one of the finest Animalier sculptors of the second half of the 19th century, was born on May 15th 1827 in Bordeaux. He was the brother of Rosa Bonheur, the most famous female animal painter of her day, and brother-in-law to Hippolyte Peyrol, whose bronze foundry produced almost all of the Bonheur family’s superb lost wax casts.
Taught by his father, Isidore showed great aptitude for drawing and modeling from an early age. He made his debut at the Salon in Paris in 1848 with a plaster study of An African Horseman attacked by a Lion and exhibited at the Royal Academy in London. He was the winner of the Gold Medal at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1889 and was awarded with the Légion d'Honneur in 1895.
Although Isidore made beautiful bronzes of race horses, which were extremely popular, his first love was for the farm animals of Normandy: horses, sheep and especially cattle. His Normandy cows set an official standard for the breed. These finely rendered images of everyday farm animals set him aside from those academic sculptors that pandered to the sophisticated and fashionable markets. He also had a love of more exciting wild animals and visited the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show on many occasions, which resulted in the commission for the great stone lions which still flank the stairs of the Palais de Justice in Paris.
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Status:
SOLD
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