Empty Pockets With A Little Girl Playing With A Cat

This useful and charming bronze trinket tray depicts a young girl playing with a cat over a basket.
This sculpture is signed by Charles Montginot and the bronze has numbers 14 and 8298 as well as a guarantee mark.
Some traces of wear on the girl's patina.

Born in 1825 in Brienne-le-Château, Charles Joseph Montginot entered the Beaux-Arts in Paris where he became friends with Edouard Manet. He became a well-known painter and engraver for his portraits, still lifes and genre scenes.
He died in Dienville in 1900. Montginot's work also includes rarer and more charming sculptures cast in bronze, representing women and some animals, such as this very beautiful basket-shaped trinket tray on which a little girl and a mischievous cat play.

Some of his works can be found in museums, at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris and in the United States in Baltimore, as well as at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington.

Source: Wikipedia