The Broken Mirror Or The Unknown Truth - Aimé-jules Dalou (1838-1902)

Bronze with a very nuanced brown patina
cast by SUSSE

France
circa 1910
height 34 cm

A similar model reproduced in "Jules Dalou, le sculpteur de la République", Exhibition held at the Musée du Petit Palais, Paris, 2013, page 391, n°316.

Biography :
Aimé-Jules Dalou, said Jules Dalou(1838-1902) was a French sculptor, born from Protestants glovers craftsmen who raised in secularism and love of the Republic. Jules Dalou was very young talented for modeling and drawing, which earned him the attention of Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, who made him entered in 1852 in the Little School, the future National School of Decorative Arts in Paris. In 1854, he was admitted to the School of Fine Arts in Paris, where he studied painting in the workshop of Abel de Pujol and sculpture in the workshop of Francisque Duret. He began to earn his living by working for decorators, and began his friendship with Auguste Rodin. Dalou then produced decorative sculptures for buildings on major Parisian avenues, such as the Hotel de la Paiva, on the Champs-Elysees Avenue. He presented but failed four times to Rome prize competition, but exhibited at the 1869 Salon his "Daphnis and Chloe" and the "Embroiderer" at the Salon of 1870, two pieces acquired by the French state. Dalou had one child, Georgette, a girl born with a mental handicap. This is to ensure funding for her daughter's life accommodation in the Orphanage of Arts, that Dalou bequeathed the funds from his workshop to this institution.

After the bloody week of May 1871 Dalou, his wife and their daughter were threatened as Communards, forced into exile and requested asylum. They then joined England and were greeted by his former fellows of the Little School, the painter Alphonse Legros. With Legros, much introduced in the City, he made a serie of terracotta statuettes inspired by boulonnaise peasants or intimate subjects (readers, lullabies), and portraits of the English aristocracy. He became professor for modeling at the National Art Training School, his influence was decisive for many British sculptors. He received orders for a public fountain in marble titled "Charity" (1877) near the Royal Exchange in London, and a monument dedicated to Queen Victoria's grandchildren located in the private chapel of Frogmore at Windsor Castle.

In May 1874, the Paris War Council condemned him in absentia to hard labor for life. Having refused to beg for mercy, he was only in May 1879 being granted amnesty and his family finally returned from exile. His group "The Triumph of the Republic", originally planned for the Place de la Republique in Paris, was finally erected on the Place du Trône, renamed Place de La Nation in 1880. Dalou devoted twenty years to the realization of this monument. The years 1881 and 1882 were difficult, but the 1883 Salon finally revealed him to the French public. He exhibited his two high reliefs: "The Brotherhood of Peoples" and "Mirabeau answering Dreux-Brézé", for which he was awarded the Medal of Honor. Fleeing the world and living in family, Dalou engaged in considerable work and many orders both private and public. For the Universal Exhibition of 1889, was inaugurated on the Place de la Nation the plaster of "The Triumph of the Republic" commissioned by the city of Paris in 1879. Although the bronze version of the group was inaugurated in 1899, this work won the grand prize for sculpture in the exhibition. Dalou left the French Society of Artists in 1890 to expose at the National Society of Fine Arts, of which he was a founding member with Ernest Meissonier, Auguste Rodin and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. Awarded Knight of the Legion of Honor in 1883, and promoted to officer by President Carnot in 1889, he was elevated to the rank of Commander of the same order in 1899 by President Loubet at the inauguration of the monument of "The Triumph of the Republic".