Albert Ernest Carrier-Belleuse

1824 – Auzy-le-Château -  Sèvres - 1887

Bacchante: Femme versant du vin

Signed: A Carrier Belleuse

Terracotta, patinated.  82 cm   32 ¼   inches

with base 20 cm, 8 inches

Note:

Properly Carrier de Belleuse, Albert Ernest became a pupil of David d’Angers in 1840 at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. He first exhibited at the Salon in 1851 with two bronze medals but did not exhibit again until 1857; thereafter he showed every year until his death.  The June Revolution had forced him to leave Paris and he went first to London, and from there to Staffordshire, where he worked for five years for Herbert Minton at the factory in Stoke upon Trent, returning to Paris in 1855.   Success and fame followed the exhibition of Death of General Desaix at the Salon of 1859, and after that he was much patronised by the court, and by the Emperor Napoleon III.

Carrier-Belleuse was an innovator who not only pioneered new treatments of traditional themes, but also developed traditional methods and techniques for the production of sculpture.  He was one of the first sculptors to organise public sales of his works at auction, mostly at Hôtel Drouot in Paris, but also in Brussels and London.  Catalogues for sixteen sales are known and documented but there may well have been more, for which the records have not survived.