Alfred Boucher

ALFRED BOUCHER (Bouy-sur-Orvin, 1850 - Aix-les-Bains, 1934).
"Au but".
Patinated bronze; "verde antico" marble.
Signed.
Measurements: 51 x 38 x 67 cm.

This bronze is a reduction of the sculptural group installed in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris. Presented for the first time at the 1886 Salon, it won a first class medal. The scene represents three naked runners in the final moment of the race, tense in the effort to reach the finish line. It is a subject of great compositional complexity, resolved here with remarkable technical and expressive mastery.

Alfred Boucher was a French sculptor and painter who enjoyed wide recognition during his lifetime, receiving numerous public commissions. Born in Bouy-sur-Orvin and died in Aix-les-Bains, he grew up in a modest environment: his father, an agricultural worker, entered the service of the sculptor Joseph Marius Ramus in Nogent-sur-Seine. It was there that the young Boucher, introduced to Paul Dubois, found the decisive impulse to develop his artistic vocation.

Thanks to the financial support of his town and his department, he entered the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1869, where he studied with Paul Dubois and Auguste Dumont. Although he did not win the Grand Prix de Rome, he won second prize in 1876 and completed his training with stays in Italy between 1877-1878 and 1883-1884.

His consecration came at the 1881 Salon with La Piété filiale. From then on, his reputation was consolidated both by the diffusion of bronze reductions of his works and by the realization of numerous busts of prominent figures in the scientific, literary and political fields, including René Laennec, Guy de Maupassant, King George I of Greece and President Jean Casimir-Perier.

Considered one of the most sought-after French sculptors by public institutions, he successfully cultivated various genres. His work ranged from classically inspired realistic sculpture, such as "Au but!", to compositions with social and labor themes.

From 1889 he settled in Aix-les-Bains, although he kept his workshop in Paris, and received numerous memorial commissions, such as the chapel of the Hériot family in La Boissière-École, that of the Caulaincourt family in Caulaincourt or the tomb of Auguste Burdeau in the Père-Lachaise cemetery.

In 1902, he founded the Paul Dubois-Alfred Boucher museum in Nogent-sur-Seine, renamed in 2017 the Camille Claudel Museum. That same year, driven by a philanthropic spirit, he created La Ruche, a set of workshops for young artists in the Montparnasse district, reusing a pavilion from the 1900 Universal Exhibition. He was also the teacher of prominent figures, among them Camille Claudel, as well as Laure Coutan and Louis Morel, later collaborator of Pierre-Auguste Renoir.