Lot 503: ATTRIBUTED TO FRANÇOIS-DOMINIQUE AIMÉ MILHOMME 1758-1823

BRUTUS LAMENTING OVER THE DEAD LUCRETIA
bearing an indecipherable inscription at the back (possibly D. ( )ilhomme.)

height 10 3/8 in.; 26.5 cm

terracotta

circa 1800

Washington, New York, Cambridge 1979-1982, no. 92; New York 1981, no. 53 (illus.)

Heim Gallery, London

Milhomme began his career in his home town of Valenciennes working for the wood sculptor Pierre-Joseph Gillet, before entering the workshops of André-Jean Lebrun and Christophe-Gabriel Allegrain (1733-1799). In 1799 and 1800, he competed unsuccessfully for the Prix de Rome, and accepted work to design jewellery and sculptural decoration for a townhouse in the Chaussée d'Antin in Paris (destroyed). Finally in 1801, he won the Prix de Rome with his relief of Licina deploring the death of Gaius Gracchus (the plaster in the École de Beaux Arts, Paris) and then left for Italy. After a productive period of seven years in Italy, Milhomme returned to Paris where he was admitted to the Salon in 1810 with his Amor and Psyché (Château de Compiègne).

Among the works commissioned from the artist by the state are his monumental group of the General Lazare Hoche (1808, Versailles): a A full length statue of Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1820, Versailles), the portrait of the actor François-Joseph Talma, which was shown in the Salon of 1812, as well as the posthumous portrait of Henry IV, which he exhibited in the Salon of 1714.

One of Milhomme's strengths is the demonstration of emotion, often sorrow, in his sculpture, skillfully illustrated in both his mourning women accompanying the tomb of Pierre Gareau in the famous Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris and in the present terracotta.