Alexandre Lecomte

Sold 12 March 1940 through (Charles Sessler, Philadelphia) to Lessing Julius Rosenwald, Jenkintown, Pennsylvania;[1] gift 1943 to NGA. [1] Charles Philipon, editor of _La Caricature_, having commissioned and paid Daumier to execute maquettes for a gallery of busts to be printed as lithographs, owned the clay figures outright, and they remained with his family after he died in 1862. They were purchased in 1927 from Philipon's descendants by dealer-publisher Maurice Le Garrec, who commissioned the Barbedienne foundry in Paris to cast the full set of thirty-six figures, twelve busts at a time. The first set was made available by subscription in 1929-1930, the second set apparently in early 1940, and the final set by around 1950. Lessing Rosenwald purchased each of his three groups of twelve shortly after they were made available. The Barbedienne foundry returned the orginal clays and plaster molds to Le Garrec's widow when it ceased operation in the early 1950s. Subsequently Madame Le Garrec commissioned three full sets of the busts from another foundry, Valsuani, and the clays and molds were destroyed when this edition was completed in March 1965. (See the complete discussion of the busts by Suzanne Glover Lindsay in the NGA systematic catalogue, _European Sculpture of the Nineteenth Century_, Washington, D.C., 2000: 119-125.)

stamped in the wax positive on lower left rear, in incised circle: M.L.G [Maurice Le Garrec]; incised on bottom rim, in front: 2195-1; stamped inside, in incised circle: 3/25