La Silence (Silence)

Deeply expressive and eerily captivating, La Silence, fully evokes the drama of French romantic sculpture at its height. The present plaster is related to a stone relief created by celebrated sculptor Auguste Préault in 1842 for the tomb of Jacob Roblès at the Parisian cemetery, Père-Lachaise, one his most renowned works. La Silence was subsequently shown at the Salon of 1849 where it was both praised and reproached for its macabre nature, but also gained great notoriety for its author. With its complex draperies and solemn figure set in a dramatic, foreshortened composition, Preault’s work at once reflects on ancient funerary art whilst simultaneously revolutionising this unique and transcendent vein of sculpture. Indeed, funerary monuments would prove to be one the most successful aspects of this artist’s œuvre.

Trained in the atelier of French sculptor David d’Angers (1788-1856), Préault exhibited regularly in the Salons from 1833, with the occasional hiatus caused by works judged to be too controversial. His commissions both public and private were widespread and varied, though it was in funerary art that Préault particularly excelled. Approximately twelve plasters of this group are known with detailing similar to that on the present one, including that in the Musée du Louvre (R.F. 3692), and that sold Sotheby’s, London, 5 July 2000, lot 203 and again Christie’s, London, 17 June 2004, lot 58 (£23,900). The present relief is photographed in the library of Professor Alberto de Aguiar, a noted physician who opened a laboratory in Porto in 1897. Rooms from the laboratory were reproduced for the International Exhibition for the Centenary of the Independence of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro in 1922-3, where this relief was also visible in photographs.