3-008-875 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The International Exhibition: "Reality and Appearances", marble statue, by Victor Leharivel-duRocher, 1862. 'The contrasted expression of the mask and its wearer is in the highest degree significant and suggestive. The cold marble tells the sad story of many lives - the tale of many a broken heart. Few young girls, we should imagine, escape the necessity of wearing a mask, at least temporarily, either from their own inexperience or indiscretion, from bashfulness and its frequently involuntary disingenuousness, or from the heartless conventional restrictions of society...This is not a very young, love-sick maiden, but a ripe woman: she has plucked the innocent bud and the full-blown flower of pleasure and dropped them heedlessly at her feet...She has now retired behind the scenes; she has left the great stage of the world, and there is for a while no further need for any assumption of false character; she takes off the mask and loosens the constraining drapery. Then the strength of nature asserts itself; then comes the self-questioning, the painful retrospection...She sinks into a seat exhausted with her unnatural effort...with shame, regret, and ennui'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.