CAST FROM A MODEL BY BARON CHARLES-ARTHUR BOURGEOIS, LAST QUARTER 19TH CENTURY

Bourgeois (d.1886) was a pupil of Duret and Guillaume at the Ecole des Beaux-arts and won the Grand Prix de Rome in 1863. He was renowned for his graceful and exotic figures of youths, such as Joueur du Triangle, Chasseur de Crocodile, and the present model, perhaps his best known (P. Kjellberg, Les Bronzes du XIXe Siècle, Paris, 1987, p. 137).

The Charmeur de serpents was exhibited in plaster at the Salon of 1863 (no. 2253). A two meter high bronze cast was subsequently ordered by the "minister de la Maison de l'empereur et des Beaux-Arts" and was shown at the Salon of 1864 (no. 2516) (Lami, vol. I, p.172).