Les émigrants, première version

Details

Honoré Daumier (1808-1879)
Les émigrants, première version
signed and numbered 'h.Daumier 1/10' (lower right); with the foundry mark 'George Rudier Fondeur Paris' (on the left side)
bronze with dark brown and green patina
13 3/8 x 28¾ x 3½ in. (34 x 73 x 8.9 cm.)
Conceived circa 1862-1878; this version cast circa 1955-1960 in an edition of 20 (10 for the heirs of A.V. Geffroy-Dechaume and 10 for the Daumier heirs) from the original plaster in the Adolphe-Victor Geffroy-Dechaume collection (now in the Musée d'Orsay)

Provenance

The Geffroy-Dechaume family and thence by descent to the present owner.

Literature

M. Gobin, Daumier sculpteur, Geneva, 1952, no. 64.
R. Rey, Honoré Daumier, London, 1996, no. 64 (plaster version and another cast illustrated p. 52).
J.L. Wasserman, Daumier Sculpture, Cambridge, Mass., 1969, no. 38.
Exh. cat., De plâtre et d'or, Geoffroy-Dechaume (1816-1892), Scuplteur Romantique de Viollet-le-Duc, L'Isle Adam, 1998 (plaster version illustrated fig. 2).
Exh. cat., Daumier 1808-1879, Ottawa, Musée des Beaux-Arts du Canada, Paris, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Washington, The Phillips Collection, June 1999-May 2000, no. 148 (the plaster version illustrated p. 291).

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.

Lot Essay

Living next door to each other on the Quai d'Anjou in Paris and in the countryside at Valmondois, the relationship between Honoré Daumier and Adolphe-Victor Geffroy-Dechaume was probably the closest and the longest of Daumier's friendships.

Geffroy-Dechaume (1816-1892), a sculptor of great reputation at the end of the nineteenth century, specialised in 'moulage sur nature' and Daumier asked him to cast the different versions of his seminal sculpture Les émigrants. After Daumier's death Geffroy-Dechaume kept the original plaster casts of the two versions, which were subsequently given by his descendants in 1960 and 1982 to the Musée du Louvre and the Musée d'Orsay.

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