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Description
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Aimé-Jules DALOU (1838 - 1902)
Hush-a-Bye Baby, 1874
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Brown Ink
Signed and dated: Dalou 1874
Collector's stamp: YB
H. 27; W. 19 cm
Provenance :
Paris, Alfred Beurdeley collection (5th sale, modern drawings, 1st part, Galerie Georges Petit, June 2-4, 1920, #94).
This drawing, signed and dated 1874, is of a marble sculpture, La Berceuse (Hush a Bye Baby), that Dalou had just finished for the Duke of Westminster. The sculpture was shown at the annual exhibition of the Royal Academy in 1876.
Because of his participation in the Paris Commune of 1871, Dalou was exiled to England for several years at the beginning of his career. While there, he concentrated on intimate subjects taken from daily life, including several focusing on maternity, which were inspired by the sight of his young wife, Irma, taking care of their little girl, Georgette. He treated the subject in a modern and naturalistic style, breaking with the often idealized Christian treatment of the theme. Though the composition of this sculpture is traditional, it’s freely reinterpreted. The mother and child are arranged circularly, with the maternal body absorbing that of the child into a unified whole, and the orientation of the two heads, leaning in the same direction, brings their gazes together along a single diagonal axis. The work’s construction underscores the tenderness that unites the two beings. The title, Hush a Bye Baby, refers to a very popular English lullaby, a choice that speaks to the homesickness that Dalou no doubt suffered.
Dalou’s sketches are well-known and are well represented in public collections, but his large-scale finished drawings are much more rare. Some very elaborate, detailed ones from the 1870s, done after he’d finished a sculpture, were published in l’Art. Dalou carefully oversaw the diffusion of any images made of his works. He had photographs or engravings done of recent pieces, which he then gave to clients or published in journals.
The ink drawing of Hush a Bye Baby is a good example of the pains Dalou took to get his work known. This drawing was made either directly from the sculpture or from one of the photographs that were taken of it. The musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris (the Petit Palais) has one of these photographs in its collection, acquired from the Galerie Malaquais in 2007. The photo (inv. PPPH00549) has a photographer’s stamp “Friedr Bruckmann’s Verlag / Munchen, Berlin & London.” It is dated, signed, and dedicated by Dalou : “To Mademoiselle Marguerite de Rothschild / J. Dalou / 1876 / After the marble belonging to the Duke of Westminster.”
The drawing presented here was quite likely used as the basis for an engraving, as Dalou indicated the shadows by a dense network of fine, tight cross-hatching, as would an engraver. Considering this, it’s not surprising that the signature and the date are prominently placed.
Alfred Beurdeley (1847-1919) acquired this drawing for his extensive collection, which was broken up after his death and sold at several auctions in 1920. Hush a Bye Baby was sold under the number 94 in the 5th sale of modern drawings.
“Sculptors sometimes make the error of attending too closely to highly colorful painters who don’t draw or don’t draw enough. Sculpture (a drawing on all its faces) has very little in common with coloration; it has its own coloration, which comes above all from drawing; the modeling is produced by its contours. It’s better, therefore, to study and be inspired first of all by nature and then by masters such as Raphaël, Ingres, etc.” Aimé-Jules Dalou.
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