BY ALFRED BOUCHER, LATE 19TH CENTURY

Alfred Boucher (d.1934) studied initially under Marius Ramus in his home town of Nogent-sur-Seine, before entering the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris as a student of Dubois and Dumont. He exhibited at the Salon from 1874 onwards, winning a Grand Prix at the Exposition Universelle of 1900. Producing many portrait busts, allegorical figures, groups and monuments in both marble and bronze, his work was characterised by a naturalism and skilful blending of romantic and genre trends.

The present statuette of Psyche, an unwinged variation of the usual figure, relates closely to Boucher's seated nude at the base of the Ferdinand Barbedienne monument, erected in the Père-Lachaise Cemetary in 1892.