Lot 140: c - EDME-MARIE CADOUX FRENCH, 1853-1939

signed: Marie Cdoux and entitled LA COQUILLE

white marble

86 by 40 by 50cm., 33 3/4 by 15 3/4 by 19 3/4 in.

Exposition Universelle, Paris 1900

The sensitivity with which Cadoux portrayed children stemmed partly from his active role in promoting artistic education in schools around Paris but also from the tragic loss of his young daughter while he was away in Algeria on a commission to study the availability of marble (1887). Hard working and industrious, Cadoux's roots in a modest farming community in Yonne manifest themselves in a deep-seated belief that artistic talent should be put to the service of the community. It is no coincidence that his greatest work is a public monument to labour: the Chataignier fountain in Blénau commissioned by the Socialist senator Alexandre Dethou. The project was contemporaneous with Aimé-Jules Dalou's intended 'Monument to the Workers' (1889 onwards), a far larger project that was never realised.

La coquille was sculpted in 1890 and pays homage to Carpeaux's masterpiece, the Jeune pecheur a la coquille of 1859 and its later pendant, the Jeune fille a la coquille of 1864. Cadoux proves himself equally adept at conveying the sinuous contours of youth from a multiple viewpoint, delighting in the detail of heavily undercut legs and arms and in particular their expressions of innocence. The more prominent elbows of Carpeaux's Jeune fille are here even more pronounced, although Cadoux's child is portrayed in a less Romantic guise, dispensing with the fishermans cap and net in a spirit of greater realism. The sculpture was exhibited at the Exposition Universelle of 1900, ten years after its completion, yet it still won him a coveted bronze medal.

Cadoux's earliest work, at the age of fifteen, was an effigy of Saint Germain aux roses, the patron saint of Thizy, the town where he died. By the time he was twenty he had settled in Paris and was working in the palais Garnier and taking courses in drawing and modelling at the école des Beaux-Arts under Jouffroy, whose pupil he became. Respected by his peers, he rose to become president of the union of sculptors and made a comfortable living from the various official projects he was involved with. After 1918 he was one of many to carry out war memorials around the country, including large ones at Rampillon, Saponay, Cramaille and Crécy-in-Brie.

RELATED LITERATURE J.L.Rocher 'Edme-Marie Cadoux' in l'Yonne Républicaine, Yonne, 7th October 2000