Mystery sculptor of Cambridge bulls revealed: Isidore Jules Bonheur

The extraordinary story of the two Cambridge bulls

Remember the two astonishing bull sculptures at Deloitte on Hills Road that I blogged about earlier this month?

Deloitte got back to my twitter query and told me that these sculptures are by Isidore Jules  Bonheur (1827-1901).

Isidore Bonheur, Bull, c.1878, bronze. Deloitte, Cambridge

What a remarkable revelation!

19th-century might and masculinity

Isidore Bonheur was a 19th-century French sculptor.  This means that these sculptures were imported from what was then the leading centre of the European art world  -- Paris.  Made during an era when this kind of sculpture was a central part of art-making.  Isidore Bonheur exhibited at universal and other exhibitions, and won a number of gold medals and awards.

These bulls express all the confidence of the 19th century.  They are big and brash and secular; they stride belligerently into a future of industrial and commercial promise.

They are part of a Europe that is at the height of its political and imperial power, full of arrogance and ambition and belief in its place in the world.

Isidore Bonheur, Detail of Bull, c.1878, Deloitte, Cambridge

But they speak to me also of other things:  of the price to be paid for being top of your game.  Of masculine braggadoccio and its flipsides:  anxiety about rivals, the need to be always one step ahead, patriarchal posturing with no real substance.

Isidore Bonheur, Bull Pawing the Ground, c.1878, bronze. Deloitte, Cambridge

Here's another remarkable fact:  Isidore Bonheur was the brother of Rosa Bonheur.

Rosa Bonheur

Rosa Bonheur was a hugely successful animal painter. She was also one of the few women artists to succeed within the artistic mainstream of the 19th-century.



Rosa Bonheur. Source: Les amis de Rosa Bonheur.

You can see her painting Horse Fair (1855) in the National Gallery in London:




Rosa Bonheur, Horse Fair (1855). Source: National Gallery, London.

Here is the Bonheur family:


Source: Le piéton de Paris.

Rosa Bonheur is seated and holds a print.  Isidore Bonheur stands behind her, with the snazzy ringlets above ears and forehead.  It was Rosa who apparently taught her little brother his first artistic skills.

Isidore Bonheur

What else did Isidore Bonheur sculpt?

Mainly animals.  And of those animals, mainly powerful prowling or prancing mammals.


Isidore Bonheur, Legionary on Horseback, Sainte-Anne Hospital, Paris.  Source: Wikipedia,© Siren-Com.


Isidore Bonheur, Prowling Lioness. Source: Prices 4 antiques.



Isidore Bonheur, Lion and Mouse. Source: Live auctioneers.

And, what a surprise:  quite a lot of bulls.



Isidore Bonheur, Bear and Bull. Source: frbronze.



Isidore Bonheur, Rearing Bull with Handler. Source: Arcadja.

From Paris to Cambridge

Here is a version of our very own Cambridge bull:



Rosa Bonheur. Source: Wikipedia.

This bull is a public statue.  It's one of a pair.  They face each other across the entrance gate to the Georges Brassens Park in Paris.



Parc Georges Brassens, Paris. Source: Le piéton de Paris.
The bulls are reminders that this Park was once an abattoir.  According to Le Piéton de Paris, Rosa Bonheur used to visit this abattoir regularly, in order to study the animals for her own paintings.

The two Park bulls are based on the two bulls that Isidore Bonheur exhibited at the Paris Universal Exposition in 1878.  The one with the lifted head stood on what was to be the future west base for the Eiffel Tower, the other (the one with the lowered head) stood on the north base.  Brilliant pictures of these bulls at the Expo are at Piéton de Paris.

Universal bulls

Our Cambridge bulls are versions (copies? casts?) of those Universal Exposition bulls.  What an illustrious pedigree!

I wonder when Deloitte acquired them?  The Deloitte accountancy firm was founded in 1854, according to the Deloitte website; 1845, according to Wikipedia).  I don't know when they opened their Cambridge branch or when they bought these two bulls.  But I like to think that they purchased them in the wake of the Universal Exposition, in the late 1870s or early 1880s.  As a tangible symbol of their ambitions to be universally important.  (They opened their first New York office in 1880).

Two bulls in a Cambridge office lobby.  And such a fascinating history.  Who would have thought it?

Read more:

All about Isidore Bonheur: Wikipedia.

All about Rosa Bonheur: Les amis de Rosa Bonheur (in French).

All about the bulls in Georges Brassens Park, Paris: Le piéton de Paris (with fabulous pics; in French).

My first blog post about the Cambridge bulls: Cambridge bull sculptures.

Rosa Bonheur, drawing of a pony, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Source: Fitzwilliam Museum.

Thanks to: Deloitte on twitter.

Cambridge bull sculptures

Los toros

Walk across the Hills Road Bridge and into Deloitte's offices in City House.  An unpromising entrance, architecturally ugly.  But what do you find once you're inside?

Bulls!

Bulls of bronze!

This one looks at you with defiant cluelessness.  Jaunty ears.  Short horns. A gloriously curved and taut tail.  Cloven hoofs.  And rolling folds along his chest.

A curly coiffure.  And over-awed bulging eyes.  His large round nostrils snort at you.

What is he doing here, in the lobby of an international financial advisory corporation? 

Viewed in profile, he looks less aghast and more determined.

Penetrate more deeply into the gleaming tiled lobby and encounter Bull Nr 2.

This one paws the ground, dynamic, intent, ineffectual.  Surrounded by potted palms and faux-marble stripes.

What is it you seek on your little bronze platform, o bull?

Humped and muscular.

Kind of weird and incongruous.

But kind of majestic.

Who is the sculptor?  What is their title?  Who commissioned them, and when, and why?  I have no idea.

I call them los toros (pronounced with a Spanish accent) but that's just my personal name.  Not quite because of Picasso's Guernica but more because of the Osborne bulls that stand around in Spain:

Manolo Prieto, Spanish Osborne bull, 1956 (ad for Osborne Brandy de Jerez; this one's near Seville)
Source:  wikimedia, © Grez

And feature in Bigas Luna's film Jamón Jamón.

More bull sculptures

There are loads of bull sculptures out there.  Here's a selection:

Pan He, Pioneering Bull, 1984, Shenzhen, China
Source: News Guangdong

Karl Henning Seemann, The Bull of Brand (suburb of Aachen / Aix,
in Germany), 1976
Source: wikimedia, © Arthur McGill

Paul Mersmann, Bull (Aurochs), 1934, Alboin Square, Berlin-Schöneberg
Source:  wikimedia, © Lienhard Schulz

Laurence Broderick, Bull, Bull Ring, Birmingham, 2003
Source:  wikimedia, © Green Lane

Sally Matthews, Tarw (Welsh Black Bull), National Botanic Garden of Wales, c.2009
Source: Garden of Wales

The Bull of Wall Street lurches madly.  He is a guerrilla sculpture, transported to Wall Street in 1989, after the stock market crash (one of the many?) in trucks by the artist.  And now still there, a tourist attraction.

It has affinities with Deloitte's.

Arturo di Modica, Charging Bull (aka The Bull of Wall Street), 1989

Source:  Redhotmarketing

What are your associations?  Bull and multinational business?  Bull and minotaur?  Bull and matador?   Bull and agriculture?

P.S. Children will love these.  I used to look at them through the window with my son on the way to school.  One day we entered and were amazed.

Read my follow-up post:  

Mystery sculptor revealed!  The astonishing story of the Cambridge bulls

Hemispherical sculpture on Madingley Road

There is a sculpture on Madingley Road,
they call it who knows what.
And it's been the ruin of many an art buff,
and gods, I know, I'm one.





Oh reader, tell your friends and foe,
not to see what I have seen.
Don't spend your day on rot and misery,
to Churchill Court never go.




Well, I'm not entirely sure what redeems this metal thing in front of this block of flats on Madingley Road, at the back of Churchill College.  Do what the good people in the black car pictured above are doing:  zoom past on your way to somewhere better.



Does a close-up reveal any pattern that is pleasing to the eye or puzzling to the mind?  Or is this just a tangle of bent pipes?





There seems to be a vague idea behind it:  ooh, half a sphere; a dome with a bite taken out of it; let's break it up into squiggly bits so that it's airy and doesn't weigh down on the location.  Also, quite handy to sluice off rain, I imagine.

But why place it on itty-bitty slanty stands that sort of gesture towards a plinth (except also sort of not)?



I mean, the sky looks nice.  On a sunny day.



Another view of the object with some traffic in the background.  (And no, that coach didn't stop for a photo opportunity.)

You may have noticed by now that I find this sculpture quite mediocre.  If you, on the other hand, like it, do comment and defend this poor artefact!

Title:  Not known.  There is no plaque.  I was unable to find this out.
Artist: I don't know who the sculptor is.  Do you?  Keith Edkins has no idea who made this sculpture, either.
Date:  Tim Love of the fabulous Cambridge (UK) Open-Air Art page thinks the sculpture may be from around 2006 (?) but has no idea of its title or maker.
Featured:  Real estate agents don't even mention it.  The sculpture is clearly not seen as a feature that adds value.
Where:  Madingley Road, on the left-hand side as you leave Cambridge, across the back end from Churchill College (where ages ago McDonald's used to stand).

Lyrics borrowed from The Animals.


Other posts about pointless sculpture around Cambridge:

Ugly sculpture on Newmarket Road 

Talos:  Is this the ugliest sculpture in Cambridge?
(But note:  some people love this statue.  My son, for example, said this was his favourite sculpture in Cambridge!)

Permalink:  http://artincambridge.blogspot.com/2013/08/hemispherical-sculpture-on-madingley.html

Ugly sculpture on Newmarket Road

I know it's the first day of summer and that we yearn for sun and soft breezes, and that in art it can be lovely to gaze only at beautiful things.  But not all art is rainbows and unicorns, and not all climes are blue skies.

On a miserable December day in 2012, I found this ugly sculpture:

It sits in the Cambridge Retail Park on Newmarket Road, and it's as grim as the grim grey skies of winter.

Now the Retail Park could certainly do with some public art to brighten it up, to lend interest, to allow our minds and senses to settle on something other than chain stores and parking bays.

Sadly, this isn't the sculpture to do that job.

To my eyes, it has no distinct silhouette or shape.   A spire?

On top of a sort of blob?



And why is the spire striped?  There is an attempt here to create textural interest, to contrast smooth and striated -- but the contrast is so harsh, and the horizontal lines going half-way up the spire seem so half-hearted.




I love rust.  Rust can be magnificent:  it is on the Chapman brothers' dinosaurs;  it is on Richard Serra's sculptures.

Here, though, it is not.  Magnificent, that is.





And what are these diagonal lines, incised into marble?  (Or is it granite?)  Why the contrast in materials?

And is this a giant sundial?

Or an elaborate outdoor bench?

I attempted to impart some atmosphere into this object by instagramming it with a sepia filter:



To no avail.  The pointy blob is as miserable as ever.

I suppose its one redeeming feature is the fact that it does fit in very successfully with its environment.  It is, alas, as depressing as its surroundings.

Who sculpted it?  I haven't been able to discover the artist's name nor the work's title.  If you know, leave a comment or email me!!

And if you happen to love this thing:  please do defend it!

Other posts:

Another Cambridge artfail:  Snowy Farr statue

Successful public art:  Murals under the Newmarket Rd roundabout

Have a lovely longest day of the year!

Permalink:  http://artincambridge.blogspot.com/2013/06/ugly-sculpture-on-newmarket-road.html