“It is uncontemporary art, and in that lies its force and beauty. The Gothic influence is obvious, but it has fallen into good hands.” The sculptor Robert Couturier commenting on Jean Osouf’s art.[1]

 

Coralie posed for Jean Osouf roughly between 1935 and 1945, and during those ten years, Osouf explored the attitudes and the expressions of his model in many sculptures, such as Naiad, The Bather, Young Girl, Bust of Coralie, also known as Small Queen, Bust of Coralie Crowned, and Mask of Coralie, also known as Epiphany. The Bather is held in the Fine Arts Museum of Algiers, two examples of the Bust of Coralie are in the Belfort Museum of Art and History, and a Buste de Coralie couronnée is in the musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris. With its delicate modeling, this feminine and sensual figure exudes softness and melancholy.

 

This figure of Coralie is cut just above the knees; it can be compared to the 1935 complete figure of Coralie,[2] a bronze of which is in the musée des Beaux Arts in Reims (inv.999.7.2),[3] though in this work, the face is less refined.

[1] 1978 ARTICLE, p. 27.

[2] 1978 ARTICLE, p. 26, repr.

[3] In 1999, the artist’s inheritors gave an important gift of forty or so of Jean Osouf’s sculptures to the musée des Beaux-Arts in Reims, and this sculpture was among them.