Antique French bronze sculpture of a partridge family by Jules Moigniez, 19th century. Exquisitely chiseled and cast, as is almost always the case with lifetime works by Moigniez, this fine cabinet bronze is full of life and motion. Moigniez’s signature in script is precise on a smoothed surface amongst the foliage in the naturalistic base. Born at Senlis in 1835, Jules Moigniez first debuted at Salon in 1855 with two plaster groups: a small hawk quarreling with a weasel over a sky-lark and a Setter grabbing a Pheasant. He received a medal at the Great Exhibition of 1862 and continued exhibiting at Salon regularly until 1881. Of great fortune to Moigniez, allowing him to maintain precise control over the quality of the bronzes cast during his lifetime, was the skill of his father as a gilder and caster of metals - his father established a bronze foundry in 1857 to cast his son's sculptures, the quality of which are generally acknowledged to be superior. After his father's death, Moigniez partnered with A. Gouge for the foundry work on his sculptures.