Featured Cameo Art Work Help Needed

After the unlooked for success of asking the community's assistance in reading cameo signatures, and Jivvy's phenomenal work in identifying the cameo cutter whose usual signature looks so much like 'Silz' (or 'Sll') as Charles Schmoll, who worked in Paris in the second half of the 19th century, thought I'd try the same in an attempt to identify the art work behind one of his cameos, the only one I have seen that does not have a mythological theme.



I'm assuming it's a painting, and have searched using the obvious key words with no luck. Some of you are so good at this, can you help me out?

 

Took me a while to realize what the figure is holding! Am I right in thinking it’s a bird that he’s just taken out of the little birdcage? Or is the figure a she? Looks like it’s wearing trousers.

 

A lady with a pet bird. Her skirt is making a trough. Maybe the cat was there a couple of minutes ago. Thanks for having a look.

 

I haven't found a match, but the wickedness in this one... I don't know if they're teasing the cat or about to feed it!

 

Just observations: Most paintings had the bird perching somewhere, on the person or elsewhere. It seems unusual for her to be grasping the bird like that. I wonder whether she was kissing it or something? At first I wondered whether it's a whistle shaped like a bird. But the cage in the picture is a hint that it was a real bird.

More observations: she appears to be dressed in clothing from earlier than the 19th century. The carver may have accentuated the drapery a bit differently from how it was in the original source. Even in times earlier than the Victorian age you rarely see paintings with such distinct shapes of a woman's legs showing through a skirt.

That's all for now.

 

Paintings aside, it is a most unnatural way to hold a bird.

I'm thinking the "or something" might be "hmmm... wonder what killed this bird?"

 

(because I amuse myself)

 

That boy is going to grow up to be a serial killer, mark my words.

 

Chances are he never saw the original, or certainly didn't sit in front of it while making the cameo. I have to think that all the cameos that follow Thorvaldsen's reliefs, Canova's sculpture or Raphael's paintings derive from prints of greater or lesser quality, & that it took a while for these to be made & disseminated widely enough for cameo cutters to encounter them. Schmoll was in Paris, so maybe would visit the Louvre & sketch subjects he thought would make good cameos. Bought someone else's drawing in Montmartre or from a bouquiniste...

You can see the perspective got the better of him. I have seen other cameos in which a lady & a bird are having an unusually intimate relationship. Schmoll was not one of the world's best cameo cutters. The way she is holding the bird is probably faithful, more or less, to the original, but they may not be so lips to beak in the painting. He may have closed up the composition to fit into the conventional cameo oval. If we can find the original, it may also turn out that he did not get the drapery of the skirt quite right.

If Team Antiquers can't find this, I know I never will by myself. Thanks all.

 

http://www.journal18.org/issue7/on-girls-and-birds-the-structure-of-aesthetic-feelings-c-1800/

 

Pigeons will put up with a lot.

 

Using 'dove' to search seems to get closer than 'bird' does.

 

I think the way she is holding the bird (dove...) and the kiss she seems to gave him on the beak indicate she is going to throw it in the air to bring her kiss to her lover who is far away
Going to search for "colombe messagère d'amour"/love messenger dove

 

A woman embraces the carrier pigeon which brought her a letter. Painting by Miklós Barabás (1843)

 

A little laugh for finding this terrifying psychopath lady grasping the poor dove

 

Gawd! Shades of Kathy Bates in Misery!

 

Glad it wasn't just me, I thought she was about to snack on something!

 

@Bronwen 's OP bird lady does look a lot like she's about to take a bite out of a hoagie.

having studied ornithology, and I don't expect a cameo cutter to have done so, I attest that is not the correct way to hold a bird.

(for small wild birds, as in removing them from capture netting, we were taught to split the fingers of one hand into a V so it could cover both wings while cradling the head in between) Then the other hand was free to work.

Of course this is a domestic bird, so hoagie style ... well, let's call it an 'interpretation'.