Jules Aime Dalou was a student of Carpeaux and Duret at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, where he met Auguste Rodin. He greatly admired the lively style of Carpeaux, but was rather less enamoured by the more academic style of Duret who still sculpted in the more formal classical style His influence on sculptors of the day, both in France and Britain, was immense and for many critics his works were easily the equivalent of his friend and contemporary, Rodin. Dalou loved sculpting scenes of everyday life.
Dalou played an active part in politics as a Republican, being in the Paris Commune. He had to flee to London in 1871, teaching sculpture at the South Kensington School of Art. The new generation of sculptor that Dalou influenced became known as the New School, to which Alfred Gilbert, Alfred Drury, Hamo Thornycroft, George Frampton and Onslow Ford, to name just a few, belonged.
Tete D'enfant Endormi is part of the body of work produced during Dalou's period in England and is part of a the terracotta monument commissioned by Queen Victoria in memory of her grandchildren, originally produced around 1876. The monument currently resides in the Private Royal Chapel at Windsor Castle as part of the Royal collection (illustrated in Victorian Sculpture, Benedict Read, page 333). The memorial is signed and dated 1878.
Tete D'enfant Endormi is an intriguing and of course significant 19th Century work of art that represents the substantial patronage by the Royal Family of the New Sculpture movement. It was first exhibited publicly at the Paris Salon of 1891. An example in bronze is in the collection of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris and a terracotta version is in the collection of the Petit Palais, also in Paris.
Literature
Fusco, P & Janson, H W. The Romantics to Rodin, Los Angeles County Museum, N.Y., 1980, p 189, illustrated, p. 190
Read, B. Victorian Sculpture, Yale, New Haven & London 1982, p 333
Janson, H W. Nineteenth Century Sculpture, Thames and Hudson, London, first published 1985, p 195
Kjellberg, P. Les Bronzes du X1Xe Siecle, Les Editions de L'Amateur, 1986, p 223-238, Tete d'enfant endormi illus p 238
