Large Peasant - Aimé-jules Dalou - Sèvres Glazed Stoneware

From 1889, Jules Dalou undertook the ambitious project of a *Monument to the Workers*, a monumental tribute to manual workers. To nurture its authenticity, he crisscrossed fields, mines, workshops and factories, multiplying sketches and models. In 1896, he designed an imposing model: a 32-meter-high column, topped by a *Peasant Rolling Up His Sleeve* and resting on a base decorated with twelve niches housing figures of workers. The monument would never see the light of day. At his death in 1902, only the statue of the *Peasant* was completed. Presented posthumously, it aroused deep emotion: far from the classic heroic representations, Dalou here delivers a real peasant, with a heavy body, marked by labor, caught in a moment of respite. The humble gesture of rolling up a sleeve then becomes an act of dignity. Republican sculptor, former communard, Dalou breaks with academic tradition. He innovates by giving the working world a new visibility, while silently denouncing alienation through work. Through its powerful realism and profound humanism, this work embodies the ideal of a sculpture in the service of the people. Proof in glazed stoneware from the Manufacture de Sèvres. Bears the stamp of the manufacture with the initials ER (for Émile Roucheret, molder-repairer, between 1901 and 1941)