The Bread Carrier at The Petit Palais, Paris

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The bread carrier job was a primary assignment given to women at the end of the 19th century. Women were responsible for carrying bread home multiple times daily, either in a cart or wearing a large blue apron. This sculpture depicts a typical 'porteuse de pain' (bread carrier), sculpted by French artist Jules Félix Coutan. The piece is a plaster cast from 1882, used as a replacement for an original bronze statue destroyed in the square of Saint-Jacques in Paris in 1942. Jules-Félix Coutain was a French sculptor and educator who studied at The École des Beaux-Arts and received the Prix de Rome in 1872. Upon his return to Paris, he created the fountain group France Bearing the Torch of Civilization for the Exposition Universelle (1889), one of two prominent sculptural commissions for the Exposition grounds. Coutain was a realist sculptor who later expressed disdain for the researches of Rodin and impressionist sculptors who followed him while teaching at The École des Beaux-Arts from 1900.