Cast and silvered.

Some scratches on the surface.

…; from the dealer Delta 98, The Hague, to Frits Scholten, Amsterdam, 2004; by whom donated to the museum, 2004

Object number: BK-2004-5

Credit line: Gift of F.T. Scholten, Amsterdam

Clotilde Kleeberg was the first wife of the Brussels sculptor Charles Samuel (1862-1938), the designer of this commemorative plaquette. In her day, Clotilde was a famous concert pianist who regularly performed on the international stage from the time of her debut in 1878 at the age of twelve. By the age of fifteen, she had already made an extensive concert tour across Russia, Austria, Denmark and the Netherlands. In 1883, Kleeberg experienced a breakthrough in England, where she became the darling of the people. Four years later, Germany lay at her feet. In 1902, Samuel executed a marble bust portrait of his wife entitled Hommage.¹¹C. Engelen and M. Marx, Beeldhouwkunst in België vanaf 1830 (Algemeen Rijksarchief en Rijksarchief in de provincien, Studia 90), Leuven 2002, vol. 3, pp. 1388, 1394 (ill.). A biscuit porcelain version of the same bust in the possession of the painter Anna Boch (1848-1936) was sold in 1936, see sale Brussels (Galerie Le Roy), 15 December 1936, no. 174 (Le même, Clotilde Kleeberg. Buste. Biscuit (hammer price 120 Belgian francs). Anna Boch also possessed a marble bust of Samuel’s Nele (cf. BK-2004-4). Furthermore, Samuel’s second wife, the sculptress Juliette Samuel-Blum (1877-1931), carved a marble bust of Anna Boch. After Boch’s death, that bust was bequeathed to the Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten in Brussels, Belgium, inv. no. 5096, see KIK-IRPA, object no. 20038411. Various indications suggest that Boch and the Samuels knew each other well. My thanks to Lucien Midavaine for imparting this information, written communication 14 July 2022. The present portrait plaquette was made after Kleeberg’s death in 1909. The relief was commissioned by her friends, as conveyed by the dedicatory inscription on the reverse: ‘To Clotilde Kleeberg-Samuel, her friends and music lovers have (presented) this monument because she brought the strings in motion in a miraculous way. P.C. Carolus Samuel has tenderly sculpted the enduring image of his wife in bronze.’²²English translation of Pia van der Wiel’s Dutch translation of the Latin inscription. Samuel’s portrayal of his deceased wife is subtly rendered in a shallow bas-relief, seen from the back and shoulder. This unorthodox point of view, with the sitter portrayed from behind and at an angle, may possibly refer to the pianist’s absence in the aftermath of her passing: with her death, as it were, she turns her back on her earthly existence, her family and those close to her.

Charles Samuel was the son of a Dutch money changer working in Brussels. At the age of fifteen, he studied under the sculptor-goldsmith Philippe Wolfers (1858-1929), and from 1878 to 1888, he was a student at the Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten in Brussels.³³See for example J. Ogonovsky, ‘Charles Samuel’, in J. van Lennep et al., De 19de-eeuwse Belgische beeldhouwkunst, exh. cat. Brussels (Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium) 1990, pp. 550-53; C. Conrardy, La sculpture Belge au XIXe siècle, Collection Nationale (7th series, no. 83), Brussels 1947, pp. 57-58. For the most recent overview of Samuel’s work, see C. Engelen and M. Marx, Beeldhouwkunst in België vanaf 1830 (Algemeen Rijksarchief en Rijksarchief in de provincien, Studia 90), Leuven 2002, vol. 3, pp. 1388-92. Samuel’s autonomous work consisted largely of symbolist, allegorical sculptures, often depicting elaborately dressed female figures and nymphs. He was also known as a sculptor of public monuments and funerary tombs, and as a portraitist, among them portrait busts and reliefs of his artist friends, including Khnopff. Samuel’s best-known work is the Tijl Uilenspiegel Monument, erected in 1894 in honour of the novelist Charles de Coster (1827-1879) in Elsene, a Brussels municipality.⁴⁴Near the Flageyplein in Elsene (Ixilles). His ivory bust of Nele, based on one of the figures on this monument, is today preserved in the Rijksmuseum (BK-2004-3).

Frits Scholten, 2026

F. Scholten, ‘Keuze uit de aanwinsten’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 53 (2005), no. 2, pp. 213-14, no. 3

F. Scholten, 2026, 'Charles Samuel and Fonson & Cie, Portrait Plaquette of Clotilde Kleeberg-Samuel (1866-1909), Brussels, c. 1909', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20071227