Moreau Mathurin - Girl With A Cat

Charming bronze sculpture of a girl and her cat.

The statue is crafted with careful attention to detail.

It has a beautiful patina.

Mathurin Moreau, born in Dijon in 1822 and died in Paris in 1912, was a French sculptor renowned for his decorative sculptures for public squares.

He was admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1841 in the studios of Jules Ramey and Auguste Dumont. He debuted at the Salon des Artistes Français in 1848 and made a name for himself with the statue L'Élégie.

He received a second-class medal at the 1855 Universal Exhibition in Paris, followed by a first-class medal in 1878. In 1897, he was awarded a medal of honor at the Salon, where he became a member of the jury during the 1900 Universal Exhibition in Paris.

Between 1849 and 1879, Mathurin Moreau collaborated with the Val d'Osne art foundry and, as a shareholder, became one of its directors, but, observes Pierre Kjellberg, "the reign of Napoleon III was also that of fireplace fittings, and these sets, which until then were very rare, multiplied and often appeared in the catalogues of bronze publishers": Mathurin Moreau's Reading Girl is part of this craze. The artist also provided models to the Compagnie des bronzes de Bruxelles and exhibited at the Union centrale des beaux-arts appliqués à l'industrie in the 1880s.

In 1880, the artist received a prize in the competition for the erection of an allegorical monument of La Défense de Paris at the Courbevoie roundabout (the roundabout at the origin of the La Défense district), but it was Louis-Ernest Barrias who was awarded the commission.

From 1879 until his death, Mathurin Moreau was elected mayor of the 19th arrondissement of Paris — created in 1860 after annexation of the communes of Belleville and La Villette — where rue Priestley took the name of avenue Mathurin-Moreau by virtue of the decree of July 16, 1912. The satirical magazine Les Hommes d'aujourd'hui devoted its issue 183 to him, the portrait-charge drawn by Henri Demare on the cover showing him wearing the tricolor sash and pointing at an allegorical statue of the law whose base crushes the clergy, "an allusion to his liberal socialist opinions oriented towards free thought." He was named a knight of the Legion of Honor in 1865 and promoted to officer of the same order in 1885.

He died on February 14, 1912 in his home at 15, passage du Montenegro in the 19th arrondissement of Paris.