Half-body bust in terracotta.
Total H.: 74 cm. (29 in.) (including circular pedestal in white marble, H.: 12 cm); W. 49 cm. (19 ¼ in.); D. 30 cm. (12 in.).
PROVENANCE: private collection.
Ciram’s scientific report n°. 0519-OA-222Z.
It was under number 226 that Jean Antoine Houdon exhibited a marble bust of “M. de Biré” at the Salon of 1785. This masterpiece of the artist’s maturity, signed and dated in the same year and now preserved at the Getty Museum, only reappeared on the market in 2002. The fact that it had passed through the estate of the Marquis confirmed the identification of the model. Until then, the work had only been known from the original marble reduction in the Boston Museum, signed in cursive letters and dated 1786.
It is quite possible that we are dealing with an original terracotta, probably a preparatory work for the marble, with smaller dimensions due to shrinkage during firing. Few terracottas have been preserved from the artist’s work, which makes this an exceptional piece. In fact, Houdon most often lent himself to taking a mold from the raw clay and casting an original plaster.
The bust of the Marquis de Biré is one of the artist’s portraits of financiers and fermiers généraux. It is a precious testimony to his work, since most of those artworks have now disappeared.
