IN THE MANNER OF HOUDON, LATE 19TH CENTURY

This bust and the following lot, was used to complement furniture in the Linke showrooms at 170 fauborg Saint-Antoine and possibly also at his salon at 26 place Vendôme. It is one of approximately eight used for this purpose and it and the following lot are the only two that were kept by François Linke, or his daughter Caroline, at their Paris apartment on the fashionable quai Henri IV. The present bust was only photographed once in the showroom, on a carved walnut(?) mantlepiece in the Louis XV style (see photograph to left). The subsequent lot does not appear in any of the 2,400 glass negatives taken by Linke and this, together with the present lot only appearing once, might indicate that they were removed to the private apartment in the early 1900s. A caveat to this is a photograph of Linke's stand at the 1905 Liège Exhibition with an indistinguishable female marble bust showing on the 1900 exhibition piece, the Mars & Venus cabinet, Linke Archive number 701. Whereas Linke kept a meticulous price list for his furniture and a seperately numbered list for his stock of paintings, bronzes and tapestries, inexplicably none of the marble busts are listed.

Footnote researched and compiled by Christopher Payne.