Lot 159: AUGUSTE-HYACINTHE DEBAY

FRENCH 1804 - 1865 LE BERCEAU PRIMITIF (THE FIRST CRADLE) together with a copy of J.A.L., Album du Salon de 1845. Examen critique de l'exposition, Brussels, 1845 terracotta 134cm., 52¾in.

Auguste-Hyacinthe Debay had his first major public commission at the age of 13 with a colossal bust of Louis XVIII for his native city of Nantes. The Salon debut of this child prodigy came the following year. He trained in sculpture with his father Jean-Baptiste Debay (père) and in painting with the renowned Baron Gros. Auguste-Hyacinthe Debay was principally a painter, with Lami noting that he created only 15 sculptures. However, his occasional sculptural contributions to the Salon were well received. Le Berceau primitif was exhibited in marble at the Salon of 1845. In his account of this Salon, J.A.L. (op.cit., pp. 135-137) notes that the figure was conceived 15 months earlier. An unveiling of an untraced large plaster figure - possibly the present statue- shrouded in mystery took place in front of a enthusiastic crowd of contemporary artists, who urged him to carve the composition in marble. Once exhibited, it was also admired by the most influential critics of the day, including Baudelaire and Théophile Gauthier, who called it an "ingenious idea", comparing the infants in the encircling arms of their mother to birds clustered in a nest. The marble was shown again at the Exposition Universelle of 1855. Debay's poignant subject was in tune with contemporary sensibilities. The nude Eve, nestling Cain and Abel, recalls Michelangelo's Bruges Madonna, her maternal serenity set in ominous contrast with the tragic future of her sons. RELATED LITERATURE J.A.L., Album du Salon de 1845. Examen critique de l'exposition, Brussels, 1845, pp. 135-139; P. Fusco and H.W. Janson, The Romantics to Rodin. French Nineteenth-Century Sculpture from Amrican Collections, exh. cat. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, 1980, pp. 226-227, no. 103