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Cain, Auguste-Nicolas
(b Paris, 10 Nov 1821; d Paris, 6 Aug 1894). French sculptor and designer. After working in his father’s butchery, he entered the studio of Alexandre Guionnet ( fl 1831–53), an animal sculptor who worked in wood, and then became a pupil of François Rude; he augmented his training by drawing animals in the Jardin des Plantes, Paris. During the 1840s he worked for the goldsmiths François-Auguste Fannière (1818–1900) and his brother François-Joseph-Louis (1822–97) and also made models for the jewellers Frédéric-Jules Rudolphi and the house of Christofle. He exhibited small-scale animal sculptures at the Salon from 1846 onwards, making his début with the wax group Warblers Defending their Nest against a Dormouse (untraced). He went into partnership with the sculptor Pierre-Jules Mène (whose daughter he married in 1852), casting many of his own works in bronze at their foundry; he also made casts of his father-in-law’s works, continuing to do so after Mène’s death. Among the utilitarian objects he made, usually featuring animal motifs, were matchboxes and cigarette cases, ashtrays decorated with frogs or rats, as well as goblets and candlesticks.
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