Ferdinand de Lesseps (French, Versailles 1805 – 1894 Guilly)

The Alsatian artist Ringel was a prolific sculptor, glassmaker, wax modeler, ceramicist and medalist whose diverse artistic endeavors exemplified the outpouring of creative activity in France in the late nineteenth century. Nourished by German culture, immersed in music from a young age, and trained in sculpture in Dresden and Paris, Ringel brought a unique interdisciplinary approach to his creative practice, challenging artistic boundaries through innovative approaches to color, form, and symbolism.

Ringel’s gifts as a medallion portraitist prompted the commission of a medallic portrait pantheon by the journal L’Art beginning in 1882. Widely distributed, these medallions maintained the artist’s popularity with collectors, and provided him with a steady income that permitted his less commercial creative experimentations in wax and ceramics.

Part of the pantheon series, this medal commemorates the accomplishments of Ferdinand de Lesseps, a French diplomat and administrator best known as the developer of the Suez Canal, which in 1869 joined the Mediterranean and Red Seas, and for his dogged, albeit unsuccessful, efforts in the 1880s to build the Panama Canal, a project that was completed in 1914. In Ringel’s characteristic style, the medal fuses traditional naturalism, seen in the portrait, with unusual design elements, such as the strange starbursts surrounding the inscriptions.