A PAIR OF FRENCH PATINATED-BRONZE FIGURES ENTITLED 'DANSEURS NAPOLITAINS'

Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse (1824-1887) was one of the most important and innovative sculptors of 19th century France. Dr. Anita Brookner called him a "manipulator of styles," an epithet addressing Carrier-Belleuse's versatility and fearless experimentation in the fine and decorative arts. These dancing Neapolitan figures by Carrier-Belleuse are indebted to Francois Rude’s seated figure of a Neapolitan fisherboy. Rude's sculpture represented an unheroic, sentimental subject that corresponded to those depicted in the Italian genre paintings of Leopold Robert, and prompted the critic Edmund Gosse to observe later: "modern sculpture dates from 1833, when François Rude exhibited his young Neapolitan fisherboy at the Salon. This was the first attempt to present the human body as it exists before our eyes". The success of Rude's work inspired other sculptors to treat this same theme and variations of the fisherboy were produced by Francisque Duret (1833), Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (1859) and Vincenzo Gemito (1876), among others. Nearest to the present figures is Duret’s Danseur Napolitain or Jeune pêcheur dansant la tarentelle, who dances with hands raised playing the Castanets, and strikes a similar pose with one foot lifted in movement.