A beggar man

This ivory statuette is one of a pair, this one representing a beggar man, the other a beggar woman (Mus. No. A.14-1949). It is probably made by Cointre in Dieppe, France, in ca. 1820. The figures were ascribed to Wilhelm Krüger (1680-1756) at the time of their acquisition in 1949.

Cointre (ca. 1790-1820) was an ivory carver that apparently specialised in carving genre figures of beggars in ivory in a style which looked forward to the work of Pierre-Adrien Graillon (1807/9-1872). The dark wood socles are typical of his work too. Such genre figures were typical in France in the second half of the nineteenth century, as exemplified by the work of Pierre-Adrien Graillon.