Caricature Of The Violinist Niccolò Paganini By Jean Pierre Dantan, The Younger, Polychrome Plaster

Old & rare polychrome plaster cast by Jean Pierre Dantan, Dit Dantan le jeune: This portrait-charge of Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840), famous virtuoso and composer, was made the year after the violinist arrived in Paris. Dantan accentuates the filiform and almost diabolical aspect of the silhouette of the virtuoso: One cannot imagine the prodigious effect produced on the public by the appearance of this long, thin, yellow, emaciated character, whose eyes lightning when he attacked on the fourth string his famous sonata!, wrote Galoppe d'Onquaire in a poem accompanying engravings drawn from the portraits-load of Dantan (1862). (Galoppe d'Onquaire, Le musée musical de Dantan Jeune, Paris, Au Ménestrel, 1862; Unlike the artist's usual plaster, the latter has period poychromy. 32.5 cm in height. In very good condition, with point out a lack at the end of the violin If the sculptor Dantan is probably the first to launch the fashion for serial caricatures, and that Honoré Daumier (1808-1879) was inspired by Dantan's charges to create some of his bust-charges, a comparison of the two works testifies both to the great political, artistic and social divergences under the July Monarchy, and to the porosity of these environments.Dantan's virtuosity, his ability to capture faces extremely quickly – with almost -photographic - is put at the service of the worldly worlds of music and theater. Unlike Pierre-Jean dit David d'Angers, with whom he shared a passion for phrenology, and Daumier, Dantan Jeune never took sides against Louis Philippe and he gave political criticism a barely perceptible part of his work the result of a particularly strong enthusiasm on the part of artists of the time. The regulars of the Countess Belgiojoso's salon, in particular, wanted to be portrayed, and Balzac proudly evokes the two appointments that Dantan made of him. Liszt, Tulou, Habeneck, Vieuxtemps, but also Tolbecque: the whole of musical society is portrayed, from composers to music critics, including instrumentalists and singers. The Music Museum has 10 statuettes. The Carnavalet Museum alone holds more than a hundred portraits of musicians. Dantan's work cannot be reduced to the mere caricaturist aspect: it also includes a large number of “serious” statuettes, essentially made under the Second Empire, among which is a portrait of Paganini.