Elisa Bloch, Columbine And Pierrot (1887)

Élisa Bloch, born Élisa Marcus in Breslau in 1842 to a Jewish family who later settled in Paris, was a pupil of César Ceribelli and Henri Chapu. She exhibited at the Paris Salon from 1878 to 1904 and her best-known work is the bronze group Virginius immolating his daughter Virginia (1886) in Brussels. In 1868, she married Léon Meyer Bloch (1836-1904), editor-in-chief of the newspaper L'Écho de Paris. Élisa too was a woman of letters : she held a literary and artistic salon on Mondays and, from 1892 until her death in 1905, owned and edited the magazine Paris-Province, which supported young artists and writers.

Her terracotta group Colombine and Pierrot, dating from 1887 and very much in the spirit of Gavarni, is charming, dynamic, perhaps even slightly masochistic, with the cruel joy of the ballerina and the despair of poor Pierrot. Incidentally, Élisa was close to the writer Rachilde, who wrote the scandalous novel Monsieur Vénus, published in 1884. The ballerina's pose and superb expression, as well as Pierrot's kneeling pose (seemingly borrowed from a figure of a saint such as Saint Bruno), are exquisite. Bloch excelled in gesture and movement.

ÉLISA BLOCH (Breslau 1848 - Paris 1905)
Colombine and Pierrot
1887
Terracotta
H. 45 cm
Signed and dated: Elisa Bloch / 1887
Pierrot missing two fingers from each hand