Title: Sudanese Man

Artist: Charles Cordier

Sudanese Man (Nègre du Soudan) Artist: Charles Cordier (French, Cambrai 1827–Algiers 1905) Date: 1856 Medium: Bronze, marble-onyx, silvered and oxidized bronze on a green granite socle Text: The sitter, a native of Sudan whose name is unrecorded, was a percussion player for Muslim religious festivities. He lived in Algiers, Algeria, where the artist portrayed him in 1856. Cordier was among the first artists in Europe to revive a taste for sculptures made with a colorful combination of materials. He innovatively applied his artistic skills to the nascent field of ethnography, which at that time used racialized terms, as in this bust's historic French title.