Susan D. Durant (1827-1873) - Lot 81

Susan D. Durant (1827-1873) Portrait of Madame Lee Childe, née Blanche de Triqueti (1837-1886) Plaster medallion 14 x 10.7 cm Bears an antique label on reverse: "Mrs Edward/ Lee-Childe/(BLANCHE)/ née Triqueti". This medallion portrait of Blanche de Triqueti can be compared to the series of royal portraits executed by Susan Durant to decorate the borders of the panels decorating Wolsey Chapel in Windsor. Provenance: Château du Perthuis. Note: In 2024, London's Tate Modern devoted a major exhibition to women artists active in Great Britain since the 16th century. Susan Durant was one of them, considered one of the leading figures of the first generation of professional women artists to emerge during the reign of Queen Victoria. Born in London to a silk broker father who had made his fortune before 1851, she trained in Rome and in Henry de Triqueti's studio in Paris. Thanks to her solid intellectual training and recognized technical skills, she forged a reputation in the 1850s that gave her access to major private commissions and earned her the confidence of the English royal family. She began her official career in 1847, when she was awarded a silver medal for a plaster bust, and subsequently exhibited thirty-eight works at London's Royal Academy, ranging from bust portraits to allegorical and historical figures in the Romantic and Historicist movements. Her career took a new turn in the early 1860s when she was the only woman commissioned by the Corporation of London to create one of the seventeen statues for the Egyptian Room of the Mansion House. For this first public commission, she created The Faithful Shepherdess, based on a play by John Fletcher (1576-1625). The work depicts a sensually restrained shepherdess looking after her flock, a historical and moral subject that was very much in vogue in Victorian England (marble, H. approx. 213 cm, London, Guildhall Art Gallery). Through Triqueti, she met the royal family, becoming close enough to enjoy exceptions to the rigid royal protocol. In addition to teaching Princess Louise, she became close to Princess Vicky, received commissions directly from Queen Victoria and became the second woman sculptor to receive royal patronage. In addition to the Monument to King Leopold I of Belgium completed in 1867 for St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle (now Christ Church, Esher, Surrey), the portrait of Queen Victoria in 1871 for the Inner Temple (destroyed in WWII), her most important achievement was a set of twelve profile portraits of the royal family. The sculptress was commissioned to create the profiles in high relief on polychrome marble medallions depicting Victoria, Prince Albert and their children for the vast Wolsey Chapel decorative project supervised by Triqueti. Between 1864 and 1870, she traveled to Windsor, Osborne, Potsdam and Darmstadt to pose members of the royal family. These much-appreciated medallions were then reduced and cast in bronze by the Barbedienne foundry in Paris, to be used as official gifts.