G.p.h. Courapied Portrait Charge d'Un Avocat

G.P.H. Courapied is a sculptor whose career is currently unknown. A few very rare works by him can be found in the Musée d'Orsay and the Musée Carnavalet in Paris. He seems to have specialized in caricatural representations and "Portraits-Charge" of his contemporaries, in the direct lineage of Honoré Daumier (1808-1879) and Jean-Pierre Dantan (1800-1869).

The artist here depicts a lawyer, clearly recognizable by his dress and white tie called a flap or more familiarly a pleated white bib.

Sitting in front of a lectern holding an inkwell, a quill and a sheet of paper, our lawyer is pleading his case, apparently without much success, given the inscription on the lectern "une cause perdue" ("a lost cause"), and two tears are streaming down his face.

This is a "portrait charge", a caricature of a difficult pleading.

Original terracotta, minor accidents and missing parts.
Dimensions: height 24.5 cm