Charles Cordier was the first ethnographer-sculptor in the history of art. In a scientific as well as artistic spirit, he modelled a gallery of exotic portraits of people who were known at the time as ‘Negro types’, ‘Chinese types’, ‘Arab types’, ‘Moorish types’, ‘Jewish types’ etc...

He was also one of the first artists to take an interest in polychromy and, within a single work, in the assembly of different materials: marble, bronze (often multi-patinated, gilded or silvered and enhanced with enamels), onyx, etc. He also attached great importance to the quality of his work and the finesse of his bronzes in particular. The subtlety of the chasing, which he sometimes took to extremes, as in this one where the pigmentation of the skin can be seen in places, attests to this interest in the material, a characteristic he shared with Barye. The purchase of a bronze copy of his bust ‘Said Abdallah’ in 1851 by Queen Victoria gave him greater visibility, enabling him to devote himself to his art. To enrich his portrait gallery, he travelled to Algeria in 1856, Greece in 1858 and Egypt between 1866 and 1868.