Important Pair of French Bisque Bebes by Maison Huret with Costumes and Provenance
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Live Auction
Fu***ll
Highest Bidder
$65,000
Sold
sold
Click image to enlarge
Estimate
$50,000 / $70,000
Description
18" (46 cm.) Each has pressed bisque socket head with dainty features centered in the plump rounded face, full cheeks with pronounced double chin, light bulb-shaped neck, delicately feathered brown lashes and brows, accented eye corners, shaded nostrils, closed mouth with shaded and outlined lips, gutta percha bebe body based upon the Huret deposed body design, dowel-articulation at the shoulders, elbows, hips and knee joints, bisque hands with separately defined fingers and knuckles. One doll has pale blue glass eyes with spiral threading and blonde mohair wig over cork pate; the other has amber brown glass eyes with spiral threading and blonde lambswool wig. Condition: generally excellent, some typical restoration to body joints, bisque head and hands perfect. Marks: Huret 54 Boulv. Haussman Paris (kid torso band). Comments: Maison Huret, circa 1880. Value Points: extremely rare dolls are quite extraordinary to find as a pair, their provenance and discovery documented in an article appearing in Doll News, 1994; the pair likely originated from the same French estate. Included with dolls, which are costumed in original fine dresses and matching bonnets, are two velvet coats, additional costumes, four various bonnets, undergarments, leather leggings, and an early wooden case with hinged lid. The dolls are each wearing shoes with the shop label of A La Tentation, a Paris doll shop located at 22 Passage Vendome in 1879.
Stuart's Take
In a podcast with Louisa Maxwell of The Doll Podcast, I talked at great length about the back story of these dolls and what led them here to the Rosalie event. Legendary collector and author, Dorothy McGonagle, discovered these dolls in Paris decades ago. Walking into a doll shop she saw the first, fell in love, and claimed it immediately for herself. However, this was a large purchase at the time and little did she imagine that an hour later she would walk into another Paris shop a few blocks away and find the identical one to hers! She talked to the dealer and discovered that they had both come from the same family, owned by sisters long past, and that the dealers, unable to financially keep them together, split them up. Dorothy was determined to reunite them and preserve this wonderful story. As documented in an article she wrote for Doll News in 1994, she recounts her pulling together everything she could to be able to buy them both. She succeeded. Owned them for a few years, and later sold them both to Rosalie for the museum, assuring the next line of passage would also keep them together. The family, and Theriault's, agreed that this sentiment of seeing them as a pair always should continue, including with this auction.
