Summary

Sculptures, terracotta; two singeries, ‘La Chasteté de Joseph’ and ‘!!! Pignouf’; Lucien-François Desbordes (fl. c. 1850-1860), French, Paris; c. 1850-1855. A pair of humorous sculptures depicting two monkeys acting out the biblical scene in which the young Joseph escapes seduction by the wife of Potiphar, captain of Pharaoh’s guard. The sculptures are so-called singeries, in which the roles of humans are taken by monkeys. Singeries became especially popular in the eighteenth century and again in France around the middle of the nineteenth century, when there was a revival of interest in the arts of the previous century. The sculptures are housed within French glass shades with wooden bases, supplied by James Hetley and Co.

Full description

Two terracotta sculptures by François-Lucien Desbordes (fl.c.1850-1860) depicting two monkeys in a two-part tableau entitled ‘Chasteté de Joseph’ (‘the Chastity of Joseph’) and ‘!!! / Pignouf' (‘Idiot’), which re-enact the biblical scene of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife. In the first, a female monkey, wearing a wimple-like headdress, lies in an abandoned position upon a divan, licking her lips and looking suggestively towards a young male monkey on the left. The female seeks to restrain the second monkey by pacing her left foot firmly on his foot and by pulling his tail, causing the male monkey to scream out in pain. Meanwhile she also reaches down with her left hand into the side of the divan. In the companion scene entitled ‘Pignouf’ (‘Idiot’), the female holds the male monkey's tail, which has broken off, in her right hand and looks disgruntled, whilst he screams in surprise and pain, indicated by the multiple exclamation marks in the inscription to the left, on the base. The inscription on the right, ‘Idiot’ (‘Pignouf’) is presumably meant to have been spoken by the female monkey. In both sculptures, there is a thick base carrying at the front the inscription and, on the right side, the artist’s signature. Both sculptures are in glass domes with painted wooden bases, with four wooden ball feet, a label on the underside of each for the mid-nineteenth century London-based glass merchant James Hetley (fl.c. 1850-1880). The two sculptures form a slightly crudely humorous retelling of the biblical story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife, as told in the Book of Genesis (39: 7-20). Joseph, the son of the Hebrew patriarch Jacob and his wife Rachel, was sold into slavery in Egypt, where he was bought by Potiphar, Captain of Pharoah’s guard, who made him steward of his household. The wife of Potiphar attempted to seduce Joseph but was repeatedly rebuffed by him; one day, when they were alone, she grasped at his robes, pleading with him to make love to her. Joseph tore himself away and fled, but left his cloak in her hands. Humiliated, Potiphar’s wife then sought revenge by complaining to Potiphar, using the cloak as evidence, that it was Joseph who had tried to violate her, upon which Joseph was cast into prison. In Desbordes’ first sculpture, the monkey’s tail takes the place of Joseph’s robe, whilst in its companion, we see it torn or cut off and left in the hands of the female monkey. The sculptures are an example of the genre known as ‘singeries’, works of art in which the main figures are monkeys, often dressed in human clothing, who imitate human actions such as hunting or playing cards. Monkeys are found in European art already in the medieval period, but the real vogue for singeries began in the late seventeenth century and reached its height in the eighteenth. Examples of eighteenth-century Meissen singerie figures are at Clandon Park (NT 1440310) and at Polesden Lacey (NT 1245667). The genre experienced a revival in the mid-nineteenth century, especially in Second Empire Paris (c. 1850-1870), when there was a new enthusiasm for the arts of eighteenth-century France. The sculptures by Desbordes, made in the 1850s, reflect this new mid-century fashion, as does a singerie inkstand, also at the Argory (NT 565253). What little we know about François-Lucien Desbordes comes mainly from an account of the life of his daughter Louise Desbordes Jouas (1848-1926), who began her professional career as a singer at the Opéra in Paris, but went on to become an early symbolist painter (Leclerc 1927). Her father turns out to have been a musician who, at the time of Louise’s birth in 1848, was the organist at the church of Saint-Maurice in Angers; the family then moved to Bordeaux on Lucien’s appointment as director of the orchestra of the Bordeaux theatre, but he must have quickly moved from there to Paris, where he apparently continued to work as a musician, whilst developing a new second career as a sculptor of humorous subjects, working in terracotta. Desbordes’ works, described as ‘artistic subjects and pipes’ (‘sujets et pipes artistiques’), were sold from a gallery called Ily-Lorin et Cie at no. 11 in the galerie d-Orléans, the row of little shops that still exists under the arcades of the Palais-Royal in Paris (‘Annuaire général du commerce, de l'industrie, de la magistrature et de l'administration’, Paris 1856, p. 841). Desbordes was described by Maurice Leclerc as having specialised in gently satirical portraits, ‘pleasant without spite or venom’ (‘plaisantes sans méchanceté ou fiel’), which Leclerc also described as ‘charges’, the same term used for the satirical portraits made by Desbordes’ near contemporary Dantan jeune (see NT 1221043-1220149 for a series of his works at Mount Stewart). These tiny portraits apparently mainly depicted members of the legal profession, Desbordes refusing ever to indulge in political or religious satires. Leclerc described the sculptor as a ‘good-humoured artist who knew nothing of hatred’ (‘cette artiste de belle humeur, qui toujours ignora la haine’), qualities that he was said to have passed on to his daughter Louise. A glimpse of Desbordes’ quirky character is perhaps to be seen in his successful application on 16 June 1858 for a fifteen year patent for a bathing boat (‘bâteau baigneur’; ‘Catalogue des brevets d’invention, pris du 1er janvier au 31 décembre 1858, Paris 1859, p. 146, no. 37064; ‘Bulletin des lois de l’empire français’, Paris 1860, p. 338, no. 368). At this time Desbordes was living at no. 104 rue de Grenelle in Levallois, now in the north-western suburbs of Paris. None of Desbordes’ portrait sculptures are currently known, but several of his mildly humorous terracotta sculptures do. One features a foolish-looking man trying to make up to a mature woman who pushes him away, the inscription on the base ‘Je voudrais t'chiffonner... et le monde". (‘I would like to rub you up… and the world’) (‘Erotica’, Art Valorem, Paris, 10 November 2020, lot 256). Another singerie depicts another walking couple, but this time in the form of monkeys dressed in grotesque bourgeois costume, the inscription on the base reading ‘Virtu outrage!’ (‘Outraged virtue!’; with Jean-Claude Thevenet, Lyons, in October 2022). As well as the pair of sculptures at the Argory, two other examples of Desbordes’ caricatures of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife have been recently recorded (‘Erotica’, Art Valorem, Paris, 10 November 2020, lot 257; with the dealer Jean-Claude Thevenet, Lyons, in October 2022), suggesting that it may have been one of his most successful productions. An example of the ‘Chasteté de Joseph’, but without its pair, was sold at auction in Paris in 1857 (Collection of Charles de Baudreuil, Catalogue d’Objets d’Art et Tableaux, Drouot (Pillet and Bonnefans de Lavialle), Paris, 18 January 1857, p. 5, lot 55; the next lot no.56 was also by Desbordes, a ’poor man’). This helps to date the monkey sculptures to around the mid 1850s. As well as their interest as examples of mid-nineteenth century popular humorous French sculpture, the two terracottas by Desbordes retain the original glass shades with which they must have been equipped when they were bought. Both shades have on the underside of the base a printed label for James Hetley and Company of 35 Soho Square, described as a ‘French glass shade warehouse’, suggesting that at this time the sale of glass shades, which allowed fragile and delicate objects to be displayed relatively safely within cluttered Victorian interiors, formed the major part of James Hetley’s business. James, born in 1817, was one of three sons of Richard Hetley, who began his business of glass merchant and manufacturer from Tavistock Street in Covent Garden and then, from 1835, at 35 Soho Square. Richard had retired by 1851, by which time James was running his own business from the address in Soho Square, whilst his brother Henry had a separate glass merchant's business at 13 Wigmore Street. James Hetley subsequently expanded his business to include stained window glass, and the firm survives to this day, now part of Pearsons Glass and based in the East End. Richard Hetley was at one time in partnership with a French glass merchant and the family presumably sourced their shades from France, so they must have had very close links with Paris. It is not evident that James Hetley dealt more generally in works of art imported from France, but a gilt-bronze and enamelled garniture in the Louis XVI style in Canterbury City Museums (Inv. 2010.71.1), consisting of a clock and a pair of candelabra, has on the underside of the clock a similar Hetley business label. So it is possible that Desbordes’ sculptures were imported and sold in London, or else they could have been brought back from Paris and then been fitted with their shades. Jeremy Warren November 2022