Rene De Saint-marceaux - Ismael

René DE SAINT-MARCEAUX (Reims, 1845 - Paris, 1915)
Ismael
Terracotta mask and plaster base
Posthumous print from a model made between 1899 and 1903
Mask height: 10.5 cm / base: 11.5 cm / total: 22 cm
Signed on the edge "ST MARCEAUX" and numbered n°17/20
Marked under the base "Yvonne Jabier"
Small chips at the base of the mask
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This small sculpture is part of a set of masks by René de Saint-Marceaux saved thanks to the care of his wife, Marguerite (1850-1930), from whom she ordered prints after the sculptor's death in order to ensure his artistic posterity. For each of them, she had twenty numbered terracotta proofs made in 1922 by two former practitioners of René de Saint-Marceaux: Auguste Lardillier and Maxime Broutechoux[1].
Presented in particular at the Exhibition of works by Saint-Marceaux (masks and sketches) organized in October-November 1922 at the Hébrard gallery, the masks obtained a great critical success. In Le Temps of October 24, 1922, François Thiébault-Sisson judged that "each in its kind [was] a find of emotion and tact" and expressed the hope that they would enter not only the collections of amateurs but also museums.
In addition to the mask of Ismael, spectators could discover at the Hébrard gallery the homonymous stone sculpture, representing a seated child curled up holding his knees folded between his arms[2] and whose mask takes up the face. According to Marguerite de Saint-Marceaux's diary, her husband had worked on this "small figurine of a seated child bent in two" in October 1899, before exhibiting it at the Union du cercle artistique in February 1903.

[1] Marguerite de Saint-Marceaux, Journal. 1894-1927, Paris, Fayard, 2007, p. 1171.
[2] A paster version of this statuette at the Baron Martin museum in Gray measures 40 cm.