Autumn (one of a set of four) 1730 - 1765

Edme Bouchardon created this marble relief, titled "Autumn," reflecting the artistic and cultural values of his time. The inherent qualities of marble—its coolness and capacity for a smooth, light-reflecting surface— lend themselves to Neoclassical ideals of beauty. Using chisels and rasps, Bouchardon shaped this dense material, balancing a sense of weighty volume and playful movement. The process involved many hours, from quarrying the stone to the final polish. The sculpture’s very existence speaks to the extensive economies of extraction, transportation, and skilled labor that supported the tastes of elite patrons. The flowing lines and polished forms create a sense of effortless grace, obscuring the labor-intensive methods of its making. Yet the materiality of the sculpture—its weight, the precision of its carving—reminds us of the skill required to transform raw stone into an object of refined beauty. It invites us to consider the hierarchies of labor and taste that underpin our experience of art.