Gentleman

The statuette is made in a similar manner as the accompanying Peasant Girl Dressed for Market (BK-1954-42), i.e. as a hollow-cast bronze with solid arms and a fairly simple armature that begins in each leg and comes together in the body. Such characteristics are found in many of Prieur’s small-scale bronzes, including Man Carrying a Child (The Blind Orion Guided by Cedalion?) in the Huntington Library.¹¹San Marino, Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens (San Marino), inv. no. 17.8, see G. Bresc-Bautier and G. Scherf (eds.), Cast in Bronze: French Sculpture from Renaissance to Revolution, exh. cat. Paris (Musée du Louvre)/New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)/Los Angeles (The J. Paul Getty Museum) 2008-09, p. 135. Integrally cast pins on the underside of the feet are for mounting purposes. Even if these two bronzes did not originally formed a pair, and were cast at different points in time, their alloys closely comply with documented bronzes made by Prieur during his lifetime.²²My thanks to Arie Pappot for these observations. Cf. F.G. Bewer, The Technological Investigation of Renaissance Bronze Sculpture: Including the Technical Reports of 14 Renaissance Bronze Statuettes from the Huntington Art Collection, unpubl. manuscript 1993; F.G. Bewer, A Study of the Technology of Renaissance Bronze Statuettes, 1996 (diss., University College London); R. Seelig-Teuwen, D. Bourgarit and F.G. Bewer, ‘Barthélemy Prieur fondeur, son atelier, ses méthodes de travail’, in D. Bourgarit, J. Bassett and F.G. Bewer (eds.), French Bronze Sculpture: Materials and Techniques, 16th-18th Century, London 2014, pp. 18-38; G. Bresc-Bautier and G. Scherf (eds.), Cast in Bronze: French Sculpture from Renaissance to Revolution, exh. cat. Paris (Musée du Louvre)/New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)/Los Angeles (The J. Paul Getty Museum) 2008-09, p. 147. The later works in this group notably contain more zinc; when applied by extrapolation to the Rijksmuseum duo, this implies the Amsterdam Gentleman was cast slightly later than ‘his’ Peasant Girl.
Alloy quaternary alloy with tin, zinc and lead; copper with low impurities (Cu 87.81%; Zn 4.89%; Sn 3.62%; Pb 2.51%; Sb 0.28%; As 0.15%; Fe 0.48%; Ni 0.18%; Ag 0.08%).

The bronze initially stood on a non-original, green marble socle. In 1954, this socle was replaced by the current simple, fruitwood socle taken from another figure of the same model, then in the possession of the dealer A. Spero in London at the time of the Rijksmuseum’s acquisition of its pendant (BK-1954-42), which rests on the same kind of (possibly original) socle.

…; from Bustert, Rotterdam, fl. 175, to the museum, 1885

ObjectNumber: BK-NM-8042

The present pair of bronzes (for the pendant figure, see BK-1954-42) was long viewed as early seventeenth-century works of Netherlandish, Flemish or northern French origin, chiefly on the basis of the figures’ clothing and the genre-like theme.³³J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, p. 178. Seelig-Teuwen’s research firmly identified the maker as the prominent Parisian sculptor Barthélemy Prieur (c. 1536-1611), an attribution previously put forth by Brière as early as 1949.⁴⁴R. Seelig-Teuwen, ‘Kavalier und Magd: Zu Barthélemy Prieurs Bronzestatuetten’, Weltkunst 23 (1991), pp. 3706-09; Seelig-Teuwen in G. Bresc-Bautier and G. Scherf (eds.), Cast in Bronze: French Sculpture from Renaissance to Revolution, exh. cat. Paris (Musée du Louvre)/New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)/Los Angeles (The J. Paul Getty Museum) 2008-09, p. 144. On the basis of stylistic comparisons with bronze statuettes verifiably made by Prieur, together with his known works of monumental sculpture, such as the priant of Marie de Barbançon-Cani from 1601 (Louvre), Seelig-Teuwen convincingly ascribed the models of the present pair to Prieur’s name.⁵⁵R. Seelig-Teuwen, ‘Kavalier und Magd: Zu Barthélemy Prieurs Bronzestatuetten’, Weltkunst 23 (1991), pp. 3706-09, esp. p. 3707. Dated circa 1600, subsequent casts in bronze were nevertheless made up until the sculptor’s death in 1611, as has been learned from the inventory of his estate.

Prieur was born into a rural Huguenot family from Berzieux, a town to the east of Reims in the Champagne region.⁶⁶The following overview of the development of Prieur’s career is based on Seelig-Teuwen in G. Bresc-Bautier and G. Scherf (eds.), Cast in Bronze: French Sculpture from Renaissance to Revolution, exh. cat. Paris (Musée du Louvre)/New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)/Los Angeles (The J. Paul Getty Museum) 2008-09, pp. 102-03. Little is known about his earliest training. He may initially have worked in Reims. Certain is a trip made to Italy around 1550, with Ponce Jacquio, a fellow sculptor from Rethel, a village somewhat north of Reims, as his traveling companion. Prieur remained in Italy for an extended period of time. During the 1550s, his presence is documented in Rome, where he worked as a stuccatore, thus explaining how he would have gained experience in becoming a skilled modeller in wax. In the same city, he is named as a witness in a judicial matter as Bartholomeus Gallus stuccatorem in 1556. In the early 1560s, we find Prieur employed as a sculptor serving the Savoy court in Turin. By this time an experienced sculptor in bronze, Prieur moved to Paris in 1571, where he was received major commissions to work on tomb monuments. Many years later, in 1585, he was forced to leave the city due to his Protestant faith. In Sedan, a Protestant enclave north of Reims, he developed his craft further. It was probably during this period of exile that he devoted his efforts to producing a series of small bronze art objects that were more readily sellable when based in this relatively isolated city. Prieur’s estate inventory, but also the relatively large numbers of surviving statuettes by his hand, confirm such a shift in his artistic career. This occurred simultaneously with a different, more secular thematic emphasis, motivated by his Protestant faith: classical women prettying themselves, genre statuettes of the type demonstrated in the present cavalier and peasant woman, male nudes and animals. In the 1590s, Prieur caught the eye of the French court, eventually leading to his being chosen as court sculptor to King Henry IV in 1594 and marking his return to Paris. During this period, he sculpted various portraits of the king and his wife, Marie de Médici, and a two-meter-high bronze statue Diana de Versailles of 1602-03.

The contrast between this disparate pair is intriguing in iconographic terms: the man is rendered as an elegant young gentleman, dressed in a close-fitting doublet or jerkin with loose sleeves, shoulder flaps, a raised collar that drapes over the collar of his chemise, and puffed pants affixed to the jerkin’s skirt with laces. His stockings are tied just below the knees with a ribbon or band; the shoes are ornamented with a rosette. On his head, he wears a kind of bowler hat with plume. He turns to the right while handing a pair of gloves to the peasant girl (BK-1954-42) standing next to him. Apparently on her way to market with her fruit-filled basket, she approaches with her head and upper torso turned towards the nobleman. She wears a laced bodice with a plain, upright collar and close-fitting sleeves. With her right hand, she lifts up her wide skirt just enough to ease her pace: a gesture that results in a splendid play of drapery folds at the back of her dress. The peasant girl is wearing a folded headscarf, held in place by a band. She carries a hanging basket on her left arm while holding an apple in her hand, which she extends to the gentleman across from her.

Prieur may have been inspired by engravings with figures like those found in so-called ‘costume books’ or decorating the margins of Jodocus Hondius the Elder’s map of France from 1591, consisting of oval medallions with men and women from the three classes (nobility, citizenry and peasantry), each attired in clothing reflective of his (or her) social standing.⁷⁷R. Seelig-Teuwen, ‘Kavalier und Magd: Zu Barthélemy Prieurs Bronzestatuetten’, Weltkunst 23 (1991), pp. 3706-09, esp. p. 3708 and fig. 7. Among these depictions are a Foemina Rustica and a Nobilis Parisiensis, in pose and raiment reminiscent of Prieur’s bronzes.

Prieur’s preference for this theme, comprising two elegant figures from classes, reflects the growing fascination with the ‘lowly’ peasant genre that emerged in these years both at court and in the cities. In Flemish, Dutch and French art of the sixteenth through the eighteenth century, one discerns a clear predilection for themes of this kind, in which the simplicity of rural life is either praised or mocked in depictions and worded descriptions of its more farcical aspects or of various mundane professions (cf. BK-2006-25; BK-1978-36; BK-2006-19). Seelig-Teuwen recently noted the glorification of rural life in Claude Gauchet’s poem Le plaisir des Champs (1583), which addressed the delights of country living versus life in the city.⁸⁸Seelig-Teuwen in G. Bresc-Bautier and G. Scherf (eds.), Cast in Bronze: French Sculpture from Renaissance to Revolution, exh. cat. Paris (Musée du Louvre)/New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)/Los Angeles (The J. Paul Getty Museum) 2008-09, pp. 146-47. The gist of these works is often humoristic, at the same time trifling with social and moral values. For member of the upper classes, these images served as negative models confirming their own superiority: tronies, actors, beer drinkers, male and female peasants, beggars, pedlars and street musicians, and farm animals (cf. BK-1969-6; BK-NM-7206; BK-NM-3056; BK-1966-2; BK-1969-7).⁹⁹P. Vandenbroeck, Beeld van de andere, vertoog over het zelf: Over wilden en narren, boeren en bedelaars, Antwerp 1987, pp. 85, 102-06. Whether Prieur’s figures reflect the same kind of farcical intent, however, remains quite doubtful. The elegant and congenial attitude of both figures towards one another seems to suggest a more erotic tone. The peasant girl’s gesture recalls that of Eve, who seduces Adam into accepting her offer of an apple in the Garden of Eden.

Bronze casts of both statuettes have survived in relatively large numbers to the present day, conveying their popularity. The most recent count comes to fourteen pairs and five individual figures, with significant differences in quality and detailing to be observed.¹⁰¹⁰Seelig-Teuwen in G. Bresc-Bautier and G. Scherf (eds.), Cast in Bronze: French Sculpture from Renaissance to Revolution, exh. cat. Paris (Musée du Louvre)/New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)/Los Angeles (The J. Paul Getty Museum) 2008-09, p. 144; sale Paris (Sotheby’s), 9 November 2010; sale cat. London (Daniel Katz Gallery), 29 June to 27 July 2018, no. 16. Some entail highly elaborate renderings of the raiment, while the finishing on others is flat and mediocre. Works belonging to this latter group must inevitably be viewed as casts of original bronzes made in Prieur’s workshop.¹¹¹¹Cf. G. Bresc-Bautier and G. Scherf (eds.), Cast in Bronze: French Sculpture from Renaissance to Revolution, exh. cat. Paris (Musée du Louvre)/New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)/Los Angeles (The J. Paul Getty Museum) 2008-09, nos. 31A, 32A for a mediocre pair. The peasant girl occurs with and without the basket.¹²¹²Cf. G. Bresc-Bautier and G. Scherf (eds.), Cast in Bronze: French Sculpture from Renaissance to Revolution, exh. cat. Paris (Musée du Louvre)/New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)/Los Angeles (The J. Paul Getty Museum) 2008-09, no. 32B (without basket). Among extant works known at this time, the best casts are the pair in the Liebieghaus (Frankfurt am Main), the woman in the Huntington Library (San Marino), and the present pair. Accordingly, these works must be deemed original bronzes made during Prieur’s lifetime. On a separate note, the quality of the cast of the Amsterdam Gentleman is somewhat superior to that of its pendant.

Noteworthy is the form of the simple wooden socles accompanying the Amsterdam bronzes; these are identical to those of the Gentleman and Peasant Girl in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.¹³¹³G. Bresc-Bautier and G. Scherf (eds.), Cast in Bronze: French Sculpture from Renaissance to Revolution, exh. cat. Paris (Musée du Louvre)/New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)/Los Angeles (The J. Paul Getty Museum) 2008-09, nos. 31B, 32B. This suggests they may very well be original. It should be noted, however, that the Amsterdam Gentleman’s socle was only added in 1954, after having being removed from another Prieur bronze of the same male figure - the original pendant of the Amsterdam Peasant Girl - at the time of its acquisition from the London art dealer Spero.¹⁴¹⁴J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, p. 178.

Frits Scholten, 2024

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 218, with earlier literature; R. Seelig-Teuwen, ‘Kavalier und Magd: Zu Barthélemy Prieurs Bronzestatuetten’, Weltkunst 23 (1991), pp. 3706-09, esp. p. 3708 and note 2; R. Seelig-Teuwen, ‘Barthélemy Prieur, contemporain de Germain Pilon’, Actes du Colloque: Germain Pilon et les sculpteurs français de la Renaissance, Musée du Louvre, 26-27 October 1990, La Documentation française, Paris 1993, pp. 365-85; Seelig-Teuwen in G. Bresc-Bautier and G. Scherf (eds.), Cast in Bronze: French Sculpture from Renaissance to Revolution, exh. cat. Paris (Musée du Louvre)/New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)/Los Angeles (The J. Paul Getty Museum) 2008-09, p. 147

F. Scholten, 2024, 'Barthélemy Prieur, Gentleman, Paris, c. 1600 - c. 1611', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.24507