The Gilded Age & Auguste JEAN

Auguste Jean (1829-1896), Pair of Season Busts, circa 1865, collection not specified. Polychrome enameled earthenware, H.80 cm x W. 48 cm x D.28 cm. 

Photo ©Millea Bro Ltd.

What a surprise it was to discover, in Season 2 of the American series The Gilded Age, a pair of enameled earthenware busts by Auguste JEAN.

Known for the exceptional care taken with its sets, this series dedicated to 1880s New York features these two busts twice in the drawing-room of The Elms mansion in Newport, Rhode Island. After some research, we were able to establish that they are not part of the mansion's collections: they had been rented from an antique dealer for the filming. Sold in the meantime, they no longer appear in the following season.

This pair is well known to us. These are the allegories of Summer and Autumn, which went to auction in the United States in 2021, then were offered by an antique dealer in 2023, before being acquired for $18,500.

Among Auguste JEAN's busts identified today, only four are known: this pair, the monumental Spring which recently entered the collections of the Musée d'Orsay, as well as the Head of a Young Girl, offered by the artist to Adrien Dubouché in 1867 and preserved at the Musée national Adrien-Dubouché in Limoges.

Inspired by the tradition of large 18th-century polychrome earthenware busts, these two busts stand out for their style, their treatment of the material, and their rich polychromy. Created in the 1865s, they bear witness to a still little-known production and announce, several decades in advance, the enthusiasm for polychrome busts that would develop in France from the 1880s.

We can only commend the care taken by the decorators of The Gilded Age, who had the excellent taste to highlight these remarkable works by Auguste JEAN.