Lot 292: An important life-size French white marble group entitled 'Maternite'

By Roger Guibourgé, Paris, Dated 1910
The base signed to the left side ROGER GUIBOURGÉ/PARIS 1910/MEDAILLE D'OR and with title carved to the front
59 in. (150 cm.) high; 41 3/4 in. (106 cm.) wide; 31 1/8 in. (79 cm.) deep

Paris, Salon, 1910, no. 3638 (Gold Medal).

E. Bénézit, Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs, Paris, 1966, vol. IV, p. 493.

Born in Paris in 1881, Roger-Emmanuel Guibourgé studied sculpture at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts under Louis-Ernest Barrias and Jules-Félix Coutan. He was a regular exhibitor at the Paris Salon, where, as its inscription indicates, the present work was shown and awarded a gold medal in 1910. Motherhood was a highly popular and much treated theme in 19th and early 20th century sculpture, and in Maternité, an intimate portrait of a young mother breastfeeding her infant child with elder daughter looking on, Guibourgé has created a tender and highly competent example of the genre.