Charles Henri Joseph Cordier (d.1905) worked in the workshop of François Rude and exhibited at the Salon from 1848 to 1904. He developed an interest in different racial types which was fuelled by a voyage through Africa. Many of his ethnographical studies were bought by the state and most of these are now in the Musée de L'Homme, Paris.
The present pair of busts are a smaller and simplified version of the pair entitled Epoux Chinois (see the pair sold in these rooms, 25th March 1982) which were originally exhibited in plaster at the Salon of 1852 and then in bronze the following year (nos.1279-1280), the latter being placed on view in the Galerie Anthropologique, Musée d'Histoire Naturelle from 1860. The original half-length busts were commissioned by Monsieur de Romieu, director of the Beaux Arts and Cordier used as his models the members of a Chinese family resident in Paris at the time. The original pair, showing the man leaning on a balustrade, smoking an opium pipe, trellis behind him and the woman similarly leaning on a balustrade, a fan in her left hand, a pagoda behind her, are more elaborately decorated with silvering and enamels. The man in the present pair also differs in as much as his plaited pig-tail is coiled around his head, whereas in the original model it is shown hanging down across his front and wrapped over his arms. On both pairs Cordier has employed the technique of electro-plating, which is important since it marks the beginning of the vogue for polychrome sculpture in the second half of nineteenth century France.

We are very grateful to Mme. Jeannine Durand-Revillon for sharing with us her specialist knowledge of Cordier.