Cse Study

Charles Henri Joseph Cordier was a French artist from 1827-1905 who established himself as a leader in the emerging field of ethnographic sculpturing.

He sculptured this piece that he originally called The Bust of an African Woman that was later renamed “African Venus” by a critic known as Theophile Gautier.

This piece was created as a pendant to another work of Cordier that he called Said Abdallah in 1851. Venus is a roman goddess that is associated with love, romance, beauty and fertility.

The sculpture the African Venus shows a woman dressed in a patterned wrap, adorned with heavy earrings and a coral necklace, and from the way she was dressed, suggests that she may have come from East Africa.

We see that her eyes are glancing to the left and her lips are parted, as if she were about to speak. The sculpture looks modern for a piece created in 1851. It shows beauty and there is a modern and smooth appeal about it.

I recommend this sculpture because it stands for a “powerful expression of human pride and dignity in the face of grave injustice”. This piece is elegant and depicts true beauty and complete nobility.

Cordier submitted a plaster cast of the bust and two years later he again entered it as a bronze. The piece is cast in bronze and plated in silver that was modeled after a French woman from Guadeloupe who was enslaved as a child.

The sculpture has a presence since the woman depicted here was caught in a moment of transition from suffering from shame, pain, humiliation and slavery to someone truly dignified.

Her head tilts to one side as if she was recoiling from something, but yet her expression shows control and reserve, perhaps even a hint of contempt.

The Walters’ pair of both Said Abdallah and African Venus were cast by the Paris foundry Eck and Durand in 1852.

Cordier’s vision and his ability to execute it in rich and culturally evocative materials made him a favorite of colonists, from Napoleon II to Queen Victoria.

His piece African...