Moorish Couple
French School, circa 1800
A pair of white marble busts depicting a man and a woman of African descent.
Executed in a stylised academic manner, these works echo the late 18th-century neoclassical aesthetic, with idealised features and elegant symmetry.
Each bust is set on a matching marble socle.
Dimensions:
– Busts: H. 60 cm
– Socles: H. 12.5 cm
📚 Related literature:
• Hugh Honour, The New World. The Americas seen by Europe, exhibition catalogue, Grand Palais, Paris, 1976
• Anne Lafont, Art and Race. The African (Always) Against the Enlightenment’s Gaze, Dijon, Les Presses du Réel, 2019
📝 Commentary:
These busts reflect the Enlightenment-era European fascination with the exoticised representation of African subjects, merging artistic admiration with constructed ideas of race, empire, and otherness. They served not only as decorative art but as objects situated within a broader colonial and ethnographic imagination.
