Featured Any idea what this figure is made from?

Picked this large-ish figure up recently; it's 23 inches tall and very heavy (8 kg.) It feels solid to me; I own similar sized parian and spelter figures and those feel very obviously hollow when you hold them. There are small areas where the top coating has come away slightly, and it's a grey-ish colour underneath (but not shiny or metallic.) I'm fairly sure it's not metal as it doesn't feel cold to the touch.

There's also an area on one wrist where it has slight patches of orange and green.

The base is covered with green felt, which doesn't give much clue. Although there's a small of the same bare grey showing around the edge of the felt.

It's signed on the base "Boisleau" I think (there's a scratch near the 'o' that makes it look like "Baisleau" but I don't think that's what it's meant to say.) I can find nothing online about any artist of that name though.

I thought maybe it might be some kind of (modern) cold cast bronze, but that wouldn't show up as grey underneath, would it? Also in places it has quite a lot of the kind of yellowy-brown caked on dust / grime I see on much older figures so I don't think it's anything that recently made...

 

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Could this be after a bronze by Emile Andre Boisseau (French, 1842 - 1923)? Titled Pensive Lady https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/91097547_emile-andre-boisseau-bronze-sculpture-1872

 

Great thanks Yep that's what it's based on definitely. I figured it must be a recognised piece, but as usual I was misreading the signature despite studying it for ages.

 

Sure as heck looks it, and it sold for $4K!!!!

 

Yeah, mine definitely isn't bronze though sadly. Would still be interested to know if it is a genuine antique or a more recent copy although I'm guessing that may be difficult to establish.

 

Remove the felt on the bottom - not going to affect value. That might give you a better indication of material and age.

 

I would agree with Laura, you can see if the outer shell and inner are of the same material and you can always re stick the felt.

 

I'm going to guess a more recent copy. The base is different, and that linked example has the date next to the name. For that online example, it also seems to me that there are very tiny numbers below the name.

 

french bronze
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Bronze

 

Haven't heard of that before.

 

Leave it to the French to use wine in their bronze finish .

 

the old game. devaluing things by giving them a foreign origin.
capote anglaise - Pariser - rubber
mal de Naples - syphilis

 

OK I have done that now but it's not what I hoped to see (the green felt was there for a good reason I suppose...) But it looks like resin to me, or at least something along those lines. So presumably much newer than I'd hoped for.

Oh well, I guess I didn't pay more for it than this kind of thing would be if bought new (given its size / weight it wouldn't be particularly cheap I'm guessing.) And it has plenty of knocks and scrapes it's picked up over time that help to sell it visually a bit more than would've been the case otherwise.

 

It is a good looking sculpture. Did you check out what Fid said about French Bronze above?

 

I did, but my reading of that is that it's a term used to refer to a method of treating zinc / spelter metal figures to give them a bronze-like appearance. In fact I probably have several other figures here that the term would properly apply to. But figures like that are metal and hollow, and the Boisseau one being discussed here isn't either as far as I can see.

 

I suppose, as you said, you can tell by having it in your own hands whether it’s metal and comparing the temperature to other spelter pieces you have.
Im wondering what the casting material is, plaster would seem too soft and you would see more glaring white in the scuffed areas.
There are harder casting plasters made now, Crystocal and Jesmonite so maybe it could be one of them.

 

So that white under the felt is the solid bottom of the piece? It's just that felt on the bottom is usually paper-backed. You can't punch a hole through the center of that? At this point, I don't see any harm in giving it a shot. If it's just paper, you won't need force enough to damage even resin.

 

It's not paper, what you can see is the solid filling that I'm pretty sure fills the entire figure. It would explain why it doesn't feel hollow and weighs 8 kg anyway. I've attached a better photo as when the previous one was resized to 1MB it lost a lot of detail. To me the material almost looks like fibreglass, but I very much doubt that's what it actually is so I'm guessing it must be resin instead.