La Pensée, The Thinker, by Henri-Michel-Antoine Chapu

Friends of Music at Eagle Hill

Henri-Michel-Antoine Chapu (1833-1891, French)

La Pensée, The Thinker, circa 1877

This massive sculpture was commissioned for the grave of Marie Catherine Sophie de Flavigny, (the Comtesse d'Agoult, 1805-1876), a French romantic author and historian, who wrote under her pen name, Daniel Stern. Chapu created a bas-relief entitled "La Pensée" which depicts a young woman, seated and looking thoughtfully to the heavens as she emerges with her thoughts from under a cloak. The head of Athena, the goddess of wisdom, can be seen over the seated woman’s left shoulder. The original at her grave is in stone. Instead of Athena, it featured Goethe. The woman is holding a scroll. There is a stack of books in the lower left corner.

40 inches tall

The Comtesse was one of France's free and independent women long before feminism came into its own. She was Franz Liszt's lover, a friend of George Sand, and a writer under the name Daniel Stern. She bore two children by her marriage with Count d'Agoult and three by Liszt, including Cosima, who would leave her first husband to marry Richard Wagner. Despite strains in her personal life (she never gained legal custody of her children and was disinherited by her own family), she made her Paris salon a multilingual center of European artists, writers, and revolutionaries. Through them she partook in and wrote about the great events of her lifetime, including France's 1848 revolution. History has not on the whole treated her well, despite her stature in her own time. Much of what is known about her has been written by partisans for Liszt or Sand. In this biography, the author aims to remove Marie d'Agoult from the shadows of Liszt and Sand and allow her to be recognized in her own right.