CLAUDE MICHEL DIT CLODION (1738-1814) Lot n° 50

Young girl holding two doves near a ewer Repatinated terracotta signed on the terrace (restorations under the patina, broken vase, nose redone, restored at the level of the legs, a few fillings, missing a wing, a bird's head glued back and potentially redone, small fillings, restored foot). Height: about 33 cm Bibliography : Catalogue of the exhibition Musée du Louvre, 17 March - 29 June 1992, reproduced fig. 156. It could be a terracotta figure of a young girl holding two doves with a large ewer at her feet, which appears in the after-death inventory of the sculptor named, Woman playing with two turtledoves, Geaffrey 1912 p. 229. The second part of the 18th century saw the flowering of the vogue for terracotta statuettes, which gradually replaced marbles and bronzes in interiors, in parallel with a craze for drawing. CLODION made a specialty of these terracottas which quickly won the enthusiasm of his contemporaries