Charles Henri Joseph Cordier submitted a plaster cast of the bust of an African visitor
Saïd Abdullah of the Mayac, Kingdom of the Darfur (Sudan)
to Paris to the Salon of 1848, and two years later he again entered it as a bronze. A young African woman
African Venus
served as the model for the companion piece in 1851. Regarded by 19th-century viewers as powerful expressions of nobility and dignity in the face of grave injustice, these sculptures proved to be highly popular: casts were acquired by the Museum of National History in Paris and also by Queen Victoria. The Walters Art Museum @ 600 N. Charles Street Baltimore Maryland, houses this pair that were cast by the Paris foundry Eck and Durand in 1852.
