Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier (French, 1827-1905)
Cast by Eck et Durand Fondeur (French, 19th century)
Bust of Saïd Abdullah of the Darfour People
INV-1875
Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier (French, 1827-1905)
Cast by Eck et Durand Fondeur (French, 19th century)1848
Bust of Saïd Abdullah of the Darfour People
Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier (French, 1827-1905) Cast by Eck et Durand Fondeur (French, 19th century) →19th centuryorientalizingbust/headbronze
Date
1848
Medium
Bronze
Dimensions
82.5 × 45.7 × 35.6 cm (32 1/2 × 18 × 14 1/16 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Ada Turnbull Hertle Fund
This naturalistic yet idealized likeness depicts a formerly enslaved Sudanese man, Saïd Abdullah, who visited Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier in his Paris studio. It reflects the 19th-century fascination with non-European costumes, customs, and physiognomies, called Orientalism, as well as the burgeoning field of anthropology. A plaster cast of this bust was Cordier’s first entry to the Paris Salon, in 1848, and one of the few sculpted images of Black figures shown publicly up to that point. The air of nobility this figure projects may reflect opposition to the practice of slavery, which had been abolished in the French colonies that same year.
Also notable
Works in the same vein
