Bronze Plate Countess Valentine De Biencourt (1839-1929) Henri De Montmorency On Horseback

Countess Valentine de BIENCOURT (1839-1929) Henri de Montmorency on horseback in ceremonial dress, 1911 Cast and chiseled bronze plaque in high relief engraved on the top right "HENRI DE MONTMORENCY COMTE DE DAMVILLE CONETABLE DE FRANCE NE IN CHANTILLY IN 1534 DEATH AT AG.DE 1614 ". Signed lower right Ctesse DE. BIENCOURT and dated 1911. Lost wax casting with the foundry's stamp "CIRE PERDUE AA HÉBRARD" Haut. 29.7 Width. 28.5 cm. The Countess de Biencourt was born Chaponay in Paris on August 11, 1839. She lost her mother, Marquise de Chaponay (1819-1841) when she was only two years old, her father, Marquis César de Chaponay (1804-1882) , then entrusts her education to a teacher of Italian origin. The latter notes that the young marquise very early on has a taste for drawing and modeling pushes her to copy from life the farm animals near the castle of Beaulieu. This is how a lying ox is executed by the child who was only a dozen years old at the time. The improvement of his training was done by an artist from Lyon, Mr. Jean-Baptiste-Louis Guy (1824-1888) then professor of modeling at the Municipal School of Drawing of the Petit-Collège. As a young woman, her days are punctuated by horseback riding and meetings with her friends, which she organizes with her husband, Léon de Biencourt (1833-1871). She then sculpts during her long discussions, so her workshop is visited by many notables such as the Count and Countess of Lude, the Countess of Broissia or even the Baroness of Saint-Joseph. But war broke out in 1870 and her husband, after numerous distinctions on the battlefields which earned her the cross of the Legion of Honor, died in May 1871. The Countess then devoted herself entirely to her three daughters, including her. eldest has just turned thirteen. It buys the property of Prince Léon Radziwill in the Champs-Elysées district; it is to furnish it that she executes her most important works. She first builds wooden models and then covers them with clay. A plaster cast is then cast on this sculpture, still in the presence of the Countess. It is finally she who chisels the plaster. It is by these processes that she molds candlesticks, inkwells and parts of furniture, vases or even fireplaces. The plaster is then entrusted to MM. Durand, carvers and cabinet makers, to make the final sculptures in bronze, wood or even marble. At the start of its production, a few pieces were entrusted to Dasson such as a cartel and a pair of candelabra and are put on the market. This marketing is very rare in the production of the Countess; it only occurs on two other occasions. The first at the request of M. de Bonnechose, six copies of an umbrella stand "Caduceus of Mercury" were created, the owners of which were M. de Bonnechose, the Duchess of Levis-Mirepoix, née Chaponay, the Musée de Lyon and the three daughters of the Countess. The second occasion concerns, at the request of the Duke of Doudeauville then Ambassador of France in London, silver menu holders to serve for dinner at the Embassy. Otherwise all the other works are unique and the molds are destroyed. Then, with her age, the Comtesse de Biencourt expressed difficulties in using clay and turned to marquetry. She thus composes drawings which she reproduces on plates of wood, tortoiseshell, tin or even copper in order to saw them finely. She thus makes boxes, mirrors but also furniture. She notably succeeded in using the “Boulle” technique of the 17th and 18th centuries. Around 1892, she began to travel with some of her daughters in North and Central America then in the Middle East and the Maghreb and finally in southern Europe. In Italy, the Countess began making lost wax reproductions of some masterpieces from the 16th and 17th centuries, such as Saint Georges de Carpaccio at the Church of the Slavs in Venice. Sometimes she just works from a photograph or a postcard, the rest of the sculpture is filled with her memory. In 1904 on the occasion of the exhibition devoted to French primitives at the Bibliothèques Nationale de France with the historical figures of the Bourbons, the Countess resumed her imitation work because she reproduced the effigies of the dolphin Charles Orland (1492-1495), son of Anne of Brittany and Charles VIII, and of the young princess of Suzanne de Bourbon (1491-1503), daughter of Duke Pierre de Bourbon and Anne de Beaujeu. The first bust is kept at the Musée des Arts décoratifs in Lyon where the salon reconstituted under his name is similar to its interior, while the second is at the Château de Blanville (Eure-et-Loir), they are both reproduced by the founder of Hébrard. Biencourt-Cossé, The work of the Comtesse de Biencourt, née Chaponay (1839-1929), Paris, November 1932. For any information do not hesitate to contact me at 06.20.83.60.86 or by using the contact form. Delivery possible in France (50 €) and abroad (150 €).