A frileuse is a woman subject to cold. A marble version (Musée Fabre, Montpellier), dated 1783, was originally intended as an allegory of Winter. For the Museum's bronze, cast by Houdon himself and coming from the collection of the duc d'Orléans, Houdon stripped the spiraling columnar composition to its bare essentials. The girl's tremulous flesh is offset by her tightly drawn shawl, elegant but hardly adequate.
The Met
