Carrier-Belleuse 'La Source' Bronze — Gilt-Bronze & Marble

A patinated bronze figure titled La Source (The Spring) by Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse, personifying a water source as a semi-draped classical beauty, an amphora cradled against her hip and steadied at the neck. Waterside iris and a martial trophy gather at her bare feet, grounding the allegory at the water's edge. The modeling is characteristically refined: softly classicized features, fluid drapery worked in deep folds, and a nuanced two-tone patina — brown with green tones — that lifts toward golden highlights across the polished high points and deepens in the recesses. Incised A. CARRIER at the terrace, the signature form he used through his earlier and middle period.

Standing forty inches tall, the figure rises on a stepped rouge griotte marble socle over a removable circular gilt-bronze base banded with a laurel-and-ribbon torus — a weighty, fully finished mount worthy of the cast it carries. A documented model from one of the defining sculptors of the French Second Empire, equally at home on a console, a pedestal, or a library mantel.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse (French, 1824–1887) was among the most prolific and commercially successful sculptors of the Second Empire. Born at Anizy-le-Château and trained first as a goldsmith's apprentice, he studied briefly under David d'Angers and at the École des Beaux-Arts, and worked for a period in England before establishing a major Paris studio. His reputation rests on elegant neoclassical and allegorical figures — muses, dancers, and draped maidens — produced in bronze, terracotta, and porcelain, and he contributed decorative sculpture to the Paris Opéra (Palais Garnier). He employed the young Auguste Rodin as a studio assistant between roughly 1864 and 1870, and from 1876 served as artistic director at the Sèvres porcelain manufactory. Works signed "A. Carrier," as here, generally correspond to his earlier and middle career.

CONDITION

Excellent, with no remarkable damage. The detail remains crisp throughout the drapery and figure, and the nuanced two-tone patina is intact — brown with green tones, lifting toward golden highlights across the polished high points and deepening in the recesses. The gilt-bronze base and rouge marble socle present cleanly. As shown.

DIMENSIONS / SPECIFICATIONS

• Overall (including removable gilt-bronze base): 40" H × 10" diameter
• Overall weight (including base): 77.8 lb
• Removable gilt-bronze base weight: 10 lb
• Medium: Patinated bronze
• Title: La Source
• Mount: Rouge griotte marble socle over a removable gilt-bronze base
• Signature: Incised A. CARRIER at the terrace