“Girl with broken jug” bronze, Mathurin Moreau

Bronze sculpture with brown sheen, representing a young girl sitting at a fountain with water running from a lion’s mouth. She is holding a broken jug in her hands. Signed Mathurin Moreau on the terrace with the mention “Hors concours” and a stamp “Medaille d’honneur”.

Size: H 89 cm – diameter of the base 32 cm

French School of the second part of the 19th century.

Lit: The Moreau family is the most important dynasty of French sculptors. Mathurin is the 1st son of painter and sculptor Jean-Baptiste Moreau (1797-1855). He starts his scholarship at 19th years old at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He wins the second price of Rome in 1842 with “Diomede enlevant le palladium” and will exhibit at the Salon des artistes Français from 1848. His subjects will be praised regularly. He will send numerous bronzes like « Fée aux fleurs » (flower fairy group, 140cm, in 1853), “Fileuse et l’étude” (the spinner and the study, in 1859), “Primavera” (Spring, in 1872). Mathurin’s work includes commemorative monuments, numerous statues and busts and ornamental sculptures such as allegories and genre scenes like the Marsan Pavilion in the Louvre or a fountain in the Place du Théâtre Français (La Nymphe Fluviale). He won a second-class medal at the 1855 Universal Exhibition in Paris, then a first-class medal in 1878. In 1897, for his last participation in the Salon, he was awarded a medal of honour. Between 1849 and 1879, Mathurin Moreau worked with the Val d’Osne art foundry and became one of its directors, but he also supplied models to the Compagnie des bronzes de Bruxelles and exhibited at the “Union centrale des Beaux-arts appliqués à l’Industrie” in the 1880s.
His themes are pleasing and his gracious and realistic style links him to the Moreau dynasty.