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| Jacques de Lalaing Woman fishing (figure for a fountain) ca. 1903 marble Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tournai, Hainaut |
Jacques de Lalaing (1858-1917) was born in London and received the traditional 19th-century education of an upper-class Englishman. His mother was English, his father was a Belgian diplomat. For art school at age seventeen Jacques moved to Brussels. He stayed there for the rest of his life. By the mid-1880s, still in his twenties, he was established in his father's country as a sculptor with numerous public commissions including a monument erected in 1890 to the English soldiers who had died at the Battle of Waterloo. Lalaing's fountain figure above – evidently inspired by antique marbles of 'the crouching Venus' – is now in a Belgian museum. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam preserves a series of photographs – with a professional model on a rough dias in the studio – made by the sculptor himself in preparation for this work.
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| Jacques de Lalaing Model crouching ca. 1903 photograph Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Jacques de Lalaing Model crouching ca.1903 photograph Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Jacques de Lalaing Model crouching ca. 1903 photograph Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Jacques de Lalaing Model crouching ca. 1903 photograph Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Jacques de Lalaing Model crouching ca. 1903 photograph Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Jacques de Lalaing Model crouching ca. 1903 photograph Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
The photographs – taken as a group – make their own powerful statement about the real work of modeling, as known at that time, and the real work of making technically useful photographs, not as independent compositions but as means to an end. Viewers today might feel that the photographs make a more powerful and credible impact than the surviving marble that engendered them, but no one would have thought so in 1903.
Poses for two further sculptural projects are seen below.
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| Jacques de Lalaing Striding model in draped garment before 1914 photograph Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Jacques de Lalaing Striding model in draped garment before 1914 photograph Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Jacques de Lalaing Striding model before 1914 photograph Rijksmuseum, Amseterdam |
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| Jacques de Lalaing Striding Model before 1914 photograph Rijksmuseum, Amseterdam |
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| Jacques de Lalaing Seated model ca. 1895-98 photograph Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Jacques de Lalaing Seated model ca. 1895-98 photograph Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Jacques de Lalaing Seated model ca. 1895-98 photograph Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |