Charles Henri Joseph Cordier

Charles Cordier
Charles Henri Joseph Cordier
Born	1827 Cambrai
Died	1905 Algiers
Nationality	French
Field	Sculpture, Painting
Training	École des Beaux-Arts

Charles Henri Joseph Cordier (19 October 1827, Cambrai - 30 May 1905, Algeria), was a French sculptor of Ethnographic subjects.

Career

In 1847, Charles Cordier's meeting with Seïd Enkess, a former black slave who had become a model, determined the course of his career.^[1]

His first success was a bust in plaster of a Sudanese man "Saïd Abdullah of the Mayac, Kingdom of the Darfur" (Sudan). This was exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1848, the same year that slavery was abolished in all French colonies. It is now housed at the The Walters Art Museum.

In 1851, Queen Victoria bought a bronze of it at the Great Exhibition of London.

From 1851 to 1866, he served as the official sculptor of Paris's National History Museum, creating a series of spectacularly lifelike busts for their new ethnographic gallery (now housed in the Musee de l'Homme, Paris).

Cordier took part in the great works commissioned by the Second French Empire (Paris Opera, Musée du Louvre, the Hôtel de Ville) or by private interests such as Baron de Rothchild.

Bibliography

• Laure de Margerie, Édouard Papet & al. Facing the other: Charles Cordier (1827–1905), ethnographic sculptor. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2004. ISBN 0-8109-5606-3

References

1. ^ Described in his Mémoires, Musée d'Orsay exhibition from 3 February 2004 to 2 May 2004, Facing the other : Charles Cordier, ethnographic sculptor, page 5.

External links

• African Venus, Said Abdullah & the Sculpture of Charles Cordier

Persondata
Name	Cordier, Charles Henri Joseph
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	19 October 1827
Place of birth	Cambrai
Date of death	30 May 1905
Place of death	Algiers