Bust Of Woman, Terracotta - Joseph Witterwulghe

Bust of a woman, patinated terracotta, Joseph Witterwulghe (1883-1967), signed.

Joseph Witterwulghe (Brussels 1883 - 1967 Uccle), statuary - medalist.
Joseph Witterwulghe entered the Brussels School of Fine Arts on the advice of his parents from the director of this establishment, the statuary Jacques Marin. Joseph Witterwulghe entered the ornamental sculpture class and was taught by Julien Dillens, who oriented him towards the figure, made him work in his studio and sent him to perfect his art with the statuary Charles Samuel. Witterwulghe posed for the horseman symbolising Brabant in the Everard T'Serclaes memorial (Grand' Place de Bruxelles), created by the sculptor Julien Dillens (1902).
He also frequented Jacques Lalaing's studio and left the Academy (1907). Travel grant from the City of Brussels, stay in France, then travels to the Netherlands. Back home, he prepared his first Concours de Rome with the work L'Adoration des Bergers.
Noticed by Thomas Vinçotte, who called on his collaboration to create the pediment of the King's Palace and the Congo Monument (Cinquantenaire), the young sculptor participated in all the Triennials and most of the Salons.
In 1914, exempted from all military obligations as a "widow's supporter", he worked alone, sketched several of his great compositions and extended his activity to gypsum. After the Armistice (1918), he multiplied his works and exhibitions.
The patron Yvan Lamberty encourages him by acquiring the group L'Effort and by bringing him buyers. He sculpted the tombstone of the poet Iwan Gilkin in the Laeken cemetery, created the monument to Georges Eeckhoud and executed a large number of heads, busts, groups - highlighting the flexible interplay of the lines of the human body - and medals.
He was touched by fame; "L'Art belge" devoted a study to him, underlining the merits of his production.
After the Second World War, on the eve of the remarkable exhibition of marbles, stones, bronzes and terracottas held in 1947 at the Galerie de l'Art Belge in Brussels, a comprehensive study of the sculptor's complete work was published; it definitively established a reputation based on a figurative production, dynamic in its forms, abundant, vigorous and sensitive.