AFTER THE MODEL BY CLAUDE MICHEL, DIT CLODION, LAST QUARTER 18TH CENTURY

These bronze reliefs representing the triumph of Galatea are based on the central section of the terracotta bozzeto, rather than the finished stone frieze, designed for the facade of the hôtel de Bouret de Vezelay, also known as the hôtel de Sainte-Foy. Commissioned by the architect Alexandre-Theodore Brongniart the terracotta was first exhibited at the Salon in 1779. It was most probably included in the sale of Brongniart's collection on the 22nd March, 1792 as lot 123 and is now in the Copenhagen Museum, see Clodion exhibition catalogue (op. cit. no., 29 p. 180-187). For Clodion the commission represented his first large decorative prjoject and he drew his inspiration most notably from an interpretation of the mythological scene by Charles Natoire (1700-1777); for an engraving of the subject and other inspirational sources see exhibition catalogue (op. cit. fig. 103). It is interesting to note that the breaks present in the terracotta frieze correspond to starting and finishing points of the bronze reliefs and that the dimensions are only very slightly different. The stone version of the frieze for the hôtel de Bouret is now in the Musée des Arts Decoratifs but it does not include many of the fine details including the cherubs in low relief which can be seen in the original terracotta and in these bronze jardinieres.

The larger relief with Galatea in her chariot was reproduced in the catalogue of the Manufacture de Sèvres (Bourgeois no. 590.) and both these present bronze reliefs are mentioned in the Clodion exhibition catalogue (op. cit.). The fine workmanship and attention to detail present in these reliefs would susggest that they are the work of a late eighteenth century foundry and althoug rare it is known that Clodion supplied models for bronze objects to Pierre-Philippe Thomire who was working for the crown by 1775.

These jardinieres were in the collection of Henri Rochefort, marquis de Rochefort-Luçay (1831-1913). Born into a polical and literary family, Rochefort joined Le Figaro in 1863 but was soon dismissed due to his perceived journalistic provocation of the authorities. He became a successful writer of vaudevilles and began to publish his own paper which was banned by the authorities and had to be smuggled into France from Belgium. Having expressed sympathy with the Paris Commune, Rochefort was arrested and sent to a penal colony of New Caledonia from where he escaped, inspiring a famous painting by Edouard Manet L'évasion de Rochefort, currently in the Kunsthaus Zürich.

The jardinieres then entered the collection of Julian Broome Livingston Allen, a wealthy American banker who was related to members of the Parisian social elite and who lived in Paris and later maintained a home at the château de Quetteville in Normandy alongside his home in the United States.