Pascal-Désir Maisonneuve

At the age of 64, he started a series of fifteen portraits which poked fun at or ridiculed politicians and monarchs from various countries.

He made their effigies out of tropical seashells, primarily mollusc shells, which were held together with plaster, working without any concern for the result.

The portrait series included masks of Queen Victoria and the emperor William II.

He was not a trained artist, but nonetheless succeeded in producing, in a spontaneous way, works that showed his talent.

According to him, this was art produced by people who were not professionals, who operated outside the conventional aesthetic norms, and who did not belong to an artistic milieu.

Mask of Queen Victoria, using seashells including a shell of Lambis lambis for the crown, Hippopus species for the cheeks and a cowry for the mouth
Mask of seashells and plaster, including shells of a Cassis species for the forehead and hair, Charonia species for the ears and Nautilus for the nose