Marguérite à l’église ('Sortie de l'église')
Eugène-Antoine Aizelin (Paris 1821 - Paris 1902)
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
1879
Materials
Marble
Measurements
630 x 350 x 280 mm
Place of origin
Paris
Order this imageCollection
Cliveden Estate, Buckinghamshire
NT 766162
Summary
Marble sculpture, Marguérite à l’église ('Sortie de l'église') by Eugène-Antoine Aizelin (Paris 1821 - Paris 1902), 1879. A female bust of a young girl attending church, inspired by the opera Faust by Charles Gounnod (1859) (after Goethe) in which Marguérite prays in church after her lover, Faust, has killed her brother Valentin. She looks down while turning her head to her left. She wears medieval-style costume with a low square necked dress with flower head and acanthus leaf strips divided by cord bands, a thinner piece of similar design circling her neck and from which hangs a cross, a double string of oblong link chain beneath. An elaborate headdress bound with cord and studs, a heavy tassel on the left side. This is a marble bust version of a later full-length marble statue of Marguérite, exhibited in the 1884 Salon and in the Exposition Universelle of 1889; the plaster cast of which, exhibited in the 1883 Salon, and at the Exposition nationale des Beaux-Arts in that year, was acquired by the State and allocated to the Musée de Quimper.
Provenance
Probably acquired by W. W. Astor (1848-1919); presented to the National Trust, with the house and grounds, by Waldorf, 2nd Viscount Astor (1879-1952) in 1942
Credit line
Cliveden, The Astor Collection (National Trust)
Marks and inscriptions
E. AiZELIN
Makers and roles
Eugène-Antoine Aizelin (Paris 1821 - Paris 1902), sculptor
References
Lami 1914 Stanaslas Lami, Dictionnaire de Sculpteurs de l'ecole Francaise, Paris: E. Champion, 1914