DALOU, Jules

Dalou was fascinated by the subject of the female nude and worked and re-worked a series of models depicting nudes in guises typical of the genre, such as before and after the bath, toweling themselves, standing, bending down, or seated, taken by surprise or removing their stockings.

This plaster version of the Blacksmith belongs to one of Dalou’s most ambitious and successful groups of sculptures, the Triumph of the republic, which was erected on the Place de la Nation in Paris. He worked on the project for more than nine years. The personification of the Republic is drawn by two lions representing the strength of the population. The Genius of Freedom is steering the carriage with Abundance and Wealth following. Labour and Justice are pushing the carriage along at the sides. labour is embodied by the Blacksmith, a muscular figure with a naked torso, carrying the hammer across his shoulder and clad in a work apron and tough heavy shoes.

In the 1860s first writers, then painters began to look around them to observe the realism of everyday life. Sculptors were somewhat slower. When Dalou modeled his Embroideress in the last year of the Second Empire, he needed only to look at his wife in her camisole. The pose is just right, the dress familiar. This is not a Greek or Roman woman any longer, this is a Parisian, seen at home. The large plaster version no longer exists, but a sketch bear witness to Dalou’s new way of looking at the world.

The folds of the headscarf embracing the subject’s unruly hair invest the sculpture with an ornamental circular motion characteristic of Art Nouveau. Dalou was active from the 1860s to the turn of the 20th century and paid tribute to all the successive trends of artistic fashion during that period.

A convinced republican, Dalou fought on the barricades of the Paris Commune and was invited by Gustave Courbet, who had become the head of the city’s museums, to take the post of curator of sculpture at the Louvre. After the fall of the Commune, he was obliged to flee to England and condemned to life imprisonment in his absence. In his English period, the sculptor produced large terracotta works in which his virtuoso technique is placed in the service of consistent realism.

This composition was the first fully fledged expression of Dalou’s interest in simple, modern life and would define the stylistic and thematic direction of his work for a decade. The seated seamstress became the sculptor’s first public success when a life-size plaster version was lauded by the critics at the 1870 Salon and was subsequently purchased by the state.

The picture shows a bronze cast of a plaster sketch model made in preparation for the Salon.

For the city of Paris Dalou executed his most elaborate and splendid achievement, the vast monument, The Triumph of the Republic, erected, after twenty years work, in the Place de la Nation. It shows a symbolical figure of the Republic, aloft on her car, drawn by lions led by Liberty, attended by Labour and Justice, and followed by Abundance.

After the collapse of the Commune in May 1871, Dalou was forced to flee to England. Maternal themes, such as the present life-size terracotta, were a mainstay of Dalou’s production in England.