Patinated Plaster Bust

Patinated plaster bust in bronze style after Jean Baptiste Carpeaux (1827-1875). In 1867, Carpeaux received from the city of Paris the order for the fountain of the Observatory, the subject imposed: the four cardinal points. He found the idea of the figures spinning on themselves while thinking of the rotation of the earth, which led him to evoke the different ethnic groups that populate it. On the occasion of the studies for the fountain of the Observatory, he executed the busts of "the negress" of "the Chinese" and of the "European". The bust of "the captive negress" or "why to be born a slave" exhibited at the salon of 1869 was acquired by the Emperor and placed in the castle of Saint Cloud. The "why to be born a slave" model was published in all materials: marble, bronze, terracotta, plaster. This sculpture is one of the first works in the French landscape explicitly committed to the abolition of slavery.