Bouchard and Burgundy
15th April - 13th September 2000
The sculptor Henri Bouchard (1875 – 1960) spent most of his life in Paris, but he was born in Dijon and lived there for the first nineteen years of his life, which had a profound influence on him.
He never forgot his area of origin, referring to its history, its famous sons, its traditions and its great wines.
This exhibition underlines his lifelong interest through his main works and his projects to the glory of these subjects.
Around forty sculptures, from medals to monuments, created between 1894 and 1960 are presented either the object itself or a photograph.
As early as 1894, when he was still a young student of 19 at Dijon, the mayor of Beaune asked him to do his portrait which would be used in 1899 for a monument erected in his memory, destroyed in 1942.
Burgundian Grape Picker, 1900
Burgundy occupied a great part of Bouchard's thoughts, his time and his productions and he happily promoted this area whilst at the same time creating a huge number of works on a variety of subjects.
In 1900, he sculpted, for his own personal pleasure, a Burgundian Grape Picker carrying a double basket, heavy with grapes, who he had seen in the vineyard at the time of the grape harvest near Beaune.
Throughout his life, he would continue to model grape pickers in various situations as well as wine growers working the earth to prepare for the harvest, cutting or treating the vines and those who would then work in the cellars transforming the grape into famous wine.