CAST FROM A MODEL BY CHARLES HENRI JOSEPH CORDIER, SECOND HALF 19TH CENTURY

This attractive bust is characteristic of the high level of finishing which Cordier gave to his bronzes as well as exhibiting his pronounced taste for polychromy. The original plaster bust of this Egyptian Harem Girl, dated ‘Cairo 1866’, resulted from the studies of local life that Cordier made during his government-sponsored ethnographic mission to Egypt between March and June 1866. In a letter to his acquaintance and fellow sculptor, the Comte de Nieuwerkerke, Cordier explained his desire to travel to Egypt: ‘Remonter le Nil, choisir parmi les Coptes, les Abyssiniens, leur vraie beauté, voilà ce qui n'a pas encore été fait [...] Je veux vous rendre moi la race telle qu'elle est dans sa beauté relative, dans sa vérité absolue avec ses passions, son fatalisme, son calme orgueilleux, sa grandeur déchue mais dont le principe est resté depuis l'Antiquité’. The plaster version is now in the Ecole Nationale des Arts et des Industries Textiles, Roubaix.