Lot 18: AUGUSTE-HYACINTHE DEBAY

LE BERCEAU PRIMITIF (THE FIRST CRADLE)
signed: Debay.

55.5cm., 21 7/8 in.

terracotta

Auguste-Hyacinthe de Bay 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 de Bay (père) and in painting with the renowned Baron Gros. Auguste-Hyacinthe was principally a painter, with Lami noting only 15 sculptures. However, his occasional sculptural contributions to the Salon were well received. Le Berceau primatif was exhibited in marble at the Salon of 1845 and the Exposition Universelle of 1855. It was 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.

De Bay's poignant subject matched contemporary sensibility. The nude Eve, nestling Cain and Abel, was a secularised Madonna recalling Michelangelo's Bruges Madonna, her maternal serenity set in ominous contrast with the tragic future of her sons, revealed the relief around the base.

RELATED LITERATURE
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. 226-7, no. 103