This terracotta of a distraught father and daughter kneeling in the grass with folded hands in prayer belonged in the collection of Joseph Alberdingk Thijm (1820-1889), a prominent champion of Catholic thought and a professor of aesthetics and art history at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. In his sale catalogue the work was entitled Au tombeau de la mère (At mother’s grave). The subject matter appears to have been loosely inspired by Jozef Israëls’ famous Past Mother’s Grave (1856), representing a fisherman, back on land, passing by his wife’s grave. Saliently, Alberdingk Thijm once described Israel’s painting as ‘grim’. In his sale catalogue the work was entitled Au tombeau de la mère (At mother’s grave). The subject matter appears to have been loosely inspired by Jozef Israëls’ famous Past Mother’s Grave (1856), representing a fisherman, back on land, passing by his wife’s grave. Saliently, Alberdingk Thijm once described Israel’s painting as ‘grim’.
The small sculpture was once sold at auction as a work by the well-known sculptor Louis Royer ( 1793- 1868), whose foster daughter married Alberdingk Thijm in 1846. Although Royer created many, more or less similar compositions in this style and Alberdingk Thijm had also collected some of them, the initials ‘CH’ (or ‘GH’) on the reverse of the present terracotta are not Royer’s. Yet we don't know of a sculptor with those initials eligible for authorship. It is quite possible that they do not relate to the maker’s name, but for example to the commissioner of the group. A second, but unsigned work that belonged in Alberdingk Thijm’s collection of ‘Royer-sculptures’, depicts exactly the same type of man, but older and clad in a dressing gown, sitting pensively in an armchair (BK-NM-8975). The two works are so similar in style and workmanship that they were undoubtedly made by the same sculptor.
Bieke van der Mark, 2026
