This bronze sculpture, titled Virgin of the Offering or Virgin of Alsace, is one of five casts of the work produced by Émile Antoine Bourdelle (1861-1929) in 1921. The others are housed in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Edinburgh), the Musée Bourdelle (Paris) and the Albright Art Gallery (Buffalo, New York).
Bourdelle was a prolific French painter, sculptor and teacher. The original commission for this work came from one of Bourdelle’s students, Léon Vogt. At the outbreak of World War I, Vogt’s mother is believed to have made a vow to erect a statue of the Vierge à l’offrande should their property in Alsace survive the war. The final version of the statue was erected in the crypt of the Ossuaire des Morts Inconnu at Hartmannswillerkopf as a memorial to 12,000 unknown soldiers. The sacrificial way in which the Virgin seems to be offering the child likely resonates with many families who lost loved ones during the Great War.
The work was gifted by William Bowmore O.B.E. through the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA) Foundation in 1994. The twenty sculptures by Auguste Rodin that are currently in the Art Gallery of South Australia’s possession also came from William Bowmore’s collection.
In 2014, the bronze sculpture was subject to yarn-bombing, an organised activity that involves knitting and crocheting shapes to cover objects in public spaces. Children and other gallery visitors were invited to make pompoms and tomboy stitches, drawing inspiration from the AGSA’s 2014 exhibition, ‘Lace: The Art of Adornment’.
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