Exhibition at the museum
Facing the Other: Charles Cordier (1827-1905), Ethnographic Sculptor
From February 03rd to May 02nd, 2004
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Main picture modal
Homme du Soudan en costume algérien. Titres historiques : Nègre, costume algérien (Salon de 1857) ; Nègre du Soudan (Exposition universelle de 1889), entre 1856 et 1857
Musée d'Orsay
Achat par la maison de l'Empereur Napoléon III, 1857
© Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt
See the notice of the artwork
Charles Cordier (Cambrai 1827 - Algiers 1905), a pupil of Rude, occupies a special place in French sculpture of the second half of the nineteenth century.
In 1848, the very year slavery was abolished in France, he caught visitors' attention at the Salon by exhibiting a bust of a Sudanese. Appropriating an ethnographic science then only in its beginnings, he was also remarkable for his use of polychromy in sculpture, in particular of the onyx-marble of Algeria. From his ethnographic missions in Algeria, Greece and Egypt, he brought back busts and medallions, portraits born of his encounters with the natives.
The exhibition is now over.
See the whole program
