Alice Bessiere & Regaillette
SOLD March 2006 |
French quarter plate daguerreotype of child seated side-by-side with a very large doll. 1840s, resealed with original paper mat and backing board. Inscribed on the reverse in period pen "Alice Bessiere et Regaillette".
An absolutely stupendous image of a girl with her very large friend. The doll, whose name is evidently "Regaillette", is seated by her side in its own slightly smaller doll chair as Alice gently holds her hand. The plate is is excellent condition. There is a curling hairline scratch in the upper left corner and on close inspection tiny white specks scattered over a few locations.
Regaillette is reminiscent of Cossette's doll from Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, in the chapters "Entrance on the Scene of a Doll" and following:
The last of these stalls, established precisely opposite the Thenardiers' door, was a toy-shop all glittering with tinsel, glass, and magnificent objects of tin. In the first row, and far forwards, the merchant had placed on a background of white napkins, an immense doll, nearly two feet high, who was dressed in a robe of pink crepe, with gold wheat-ears on her head, which had real hair and enamel eyes. All that day, this marvel had been displayed to the wonderment of all passers-by under ten years of age, without a mother being found in Montfermeil sufficiently rich or sufficiently extravagant to give it to her child. Eponine and Azelma had passed hours in contemplating it, and Cosette herself had ventured to cast a glance at it, on the sly, it is true...
"Truly, sir?" said Cosette. "Is it true? Is the `lady' mine?" ...All at once she wheeled round and seized the doll in a transport... "I shall call her Catherine," she said.
