French Belle Epoque
Auguste Rodin
Age of Bronze
Patinated Bronze Sculpture Re-Cast
XX Century
ABOUT THE ARTWORK
Rodin's breakout sculpture, The Age of Bronze (L'Age d'airain) caused a critical scandal for its extreme naturalism and ambiguous subject matter. Fashioned over a period of eighteen months and based on a live model, the sculpture depicts a suspended moment of human awakening, either to suffering or to joy. Rodin's breakout sculpture, The Age of Bronze caused a critical scandal for its extreme naturalism and ambiguous subject matter. Fashioned over a period of eighteen months and based on a live model, the sculpture depicts a suspended moment of human awakening, either to suffering or to joy. First exhibited in 1877 in Brussels with the title The Conquered Man (Le Vaincu [literal translation, "The Vanquished"]), it was displayed later the same year in Paris with its current title. Rodin promoted the work’s multiple interpretations, saying, "There are at least four figures in it."
DIMENSIONS Height: 41.75 inches Width: 18 inches Depth: 14.5 inches
$18,000
Attributed to
Alfredo Castellani
Paperknife
Patinated Bronze & Marble
Italy, ca. 1880s
ABOUT
These Castellani paper cutters, paperknives or letter openers were quite popular in the second half of the 19th century. Winged figures of angels, devils, and, in this case putty, were made in various materials such as silver, bronze, ivory or wood. They all have the distinctive pointed wings with a small slit in the middle. Designed probably by Michelangelo Gaetani for Alfredo Castellani, this most unusual paperknife depicts a winged angel standing on a marble sphere. What gives this knife a special originality is the mysterious position of the putto’s arms, similar to the embrace of someone unknown, absent. However, this was done with the express purpose of giving the knife maximum functionality and ease of use. In fact, the hugging arms are designed for the thumb of the right hand and precisely calculated to the natural position of the fingers when gripping the handle of this remarkable knife.
DIMENSIONS Height: 8.33 inches Width: 1.75 inches Depth: 1.5 inches
ALFREDO CASTELLANI (Italian, 1853-1930)
The Castellani family (Fortunato Pio, Alessandro, Augusto and Alfredo) is known mainly as jewelers, but also as ceramicists, collectors and antique dealers. Active in Rome as of 1814, they were famous primarily for the creation of jewelry inspired by Greek, Roman, Etruscan, Medieval and Renaissance pieces. Their jewelry and other objects were modeled after in-depth studies on goldsmith techniques, especially those used by the Etruscans, whose tombs in Tuscany and Lazio were discovered during the excavations that took place at the time.
The products made by the Castellani family were so popular that they opened branches in Naples, London and Paris. Today, their work can be admired in museums around the world, including the National Etruscan Museum at Villa Giulia in Rome and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. The day after 20 September 1870 (the Capture of Rome), Augusto Castellani (1829-1914) helped found the Municipal Archaeological Commission of Rome. He was also among the organizers of the Artistic Industrial Museum of Rome (Museo Artistico Industriale), and served as the Director of the Capitoline Museums.
The archive was donated to the Library in 1930 in accordance with the will of Alfredo Castellani (1853-1930), the family's last heir. Though not particularly numerous, it is mainly made up of publications from the late 19th century on archaeology, history, applied arts and goldsmith craft. The presence of valuable 19th-century periodicals, especially those relating to Rome, is worth noting. The collection of booklets and brochures, despite their occasional nature (exhibition catalogues, assembly minutes, laws and regulations regarding jewelry) is more homogeneous and attests to the family's interest in antiques, ornamentation, goldsmith craft and ceramics.
Castellani was the Italian jeweler who initiated the archaeological revival movement in the mid-nineteenth century. Castellani’s founder, Fortunato Pio Castellani, opened up shop in Rome in 1814. In 1826, he met his lifelong friend and collaborator Michaelango Caetani at a lecture where he was speaking about how to recreate the look of ancient gold. According to jewelry historians, Caetani “gave Fortunato Pio the idea to imitate and seek inspiration from Ancient jewelers.”
Caetani was a Dante scholar, a historian, a talented woodworker and an artist familiar with jewelry manufacturing techniques. He was also a darling of Roman high society. Though Caetani was never formally employed by the firm, his creativity and connections helped the Castellanis to prosper.
By the early 1830s, Fortunato Pio had begun making archaeological-style jewelry. In 1836, when the Etruscan Regolini-Galassi tombs were opened, papal authorities invited him to study the jewellery found there. In the 1840s and ’50s, he and his sons, Alessandro and Augusto, were also given access to the huge collection of antiquities acquired by the director of the papal savings bank, Marchese Fiolanni Pietro Campana. While now dispersed, the Campana collection was then complete and at the Castellanis’ fingertips. They realized that the ancients created their designs by adding detail to the metal rather than carving, punching, cutting, and otherwise deforming the metal to create an effect. They were able to recreate the look and feel of these Ancient pieces using granulation, wirework, and other old-style gold working techniques. Such techniques had been seemingly lost for centuries until the brothers discovered a remote area of the Apennines where they were still being practiced.
In the 1860s, Castellani vaulted into fame as popular fascination with archaeological finds grew. Exiled from Rome due to his political views in 1860, Alessandro (the older Castellani brother) busied himself with marketing the firm’s jewelry abroad. First setting up shop on the Champs Elysées in Paris, he lectured widely on Ancient jewelry and socialized with Parisian high society, even gaining a presence with Napoleon III, to whom he presented a collection of Castellani jewelry. Alessandro also organized the firm’s first displays at international exhibitions: Florence (1861) and London (1862). In 1862, he left Paris after having an affair with, and impregnating, a married woman. He moved to London and, shortly thereafter, to Naples, where he set up his own jewelry workshop.
The firm is also known for incorporating ancient, medieval, and modern intaglios and cameos, as well as Egyptian scarabs and micro-mosaics into their pieces. According to jewelry historians, the firm was the first to place micro-mosaics, often with Early Christian, Byzantine, and Egyptian designs, in archaeological style frames. Luigi Podio was the master mosaicist for the famed archaeological revival jeweler. Podio’s workshop in Rome created some of the finest and most detailed mosaics of the period. The higher quality and exquisite detail of the mosaics in Podio’s workshop rose well above the coarser production of his peers. Podio supervised the mosaic studio from 1851 to 1888.
The firm’s designs continued to be wildly popular. At the 1867 international exhibition in Paris, “nearly all” of the jewelers featured Archaeological-style jewels in their showcases.
The firm’s success peaked in the 1870’s. In the 1880’s, the Rome location was handed over to Augusto’s son, Alfredo. Until his death in 1914, Augusto busied himself with, among other things, attempting to “document the progression of Italian goldsmith art from pre-historical times to the present.”
He suggested eight time periods: primitive, Tyrrhenian, Etruscan, Sicilian, Roman, medieval, Renaissance, and modern. Though his categories are not accepted as exhaustive today, it was one of the first modern attempts to divide the history of jewelry design into eras.
In 1930, Castellani closed its doors when Alfredo, the last in the line of Castellani jewelers, died.
$5,500
Continental Antique
Drunken Satyr
Patinated Bronze sculpture
Late XIX Century
Probably French, this elegant figurine, covered with an original black patina, depicting a tipsy satyr sitting on a stump hugging a bottle of wine, will be a wonderful artistic decoration for any interior style.
DIMENSIONS Height: 9.38 inches Width: 3.75 inches Depth: 3.75 inches
$1,200
Aesthetic Art Movement Period
BRONZE SCULPTURAL VASE
Italy, Late 19th Century
DIMENSIONS Height: 9.75 inches Width: 7.25 inches Depth: 2.5 inches
This amazingly elegant bronze vase, the only decoration of which is a bunch of flowers, is a striking example of Italian applied art of the late 19th century, at the junction of two dominant art movements of that era - Aestheticism and Decadentism.
AESTHETIC ART MOVEMENT
Aestheticism, late 19th-century European arts movement which centered on the doctrine that art exists for the sake of its beauty alone, and that it need serve no political, didactic, or other purpose. The movement began in reaction to prevailing utilitarian social philosophies and to what was perceived as the ugliness and philistinism of the industrial age. Its philosophical foundations were laid in the 18th century byImmanuel Kant, who postulated the autonomy of aesthetic standards, setting them apart from considerations of morality, utility, or pleasure.
Contemporary critics of Aestheticism included William Morris and John Ruskin and, in Russia, Leo Tolstoy, who questioned the value of art divorced from morality. Yet the movement focused attention on the formal aesthetics of. Aestheticism shared certain affinities with the French Symbolist movement, fostered the Arts and Crafts Movement, and sponsored Art Nouveau.
The last 10 years of the 19th century were marked by an even newer and more radical style in art, born of Aestheticism - Decadentism, which received its greatest development in Italy. Italian Decadentismo, Italian artistic movement that derived its name but not all its characteristics from the French and English Decadents, who flourished in the last 10 years of the 19th century. Writers of the Italian movement, which did not have the cohesion usual in such cases, generally reacted to positivism with individual stresses on instinct, the irrational, the subconscious, and the individual as opposed to scientific rationalism and the importance of man en masse.
So, what is the difference between aestheticism and decadence? Aestheticism is an art movement that supports the idea of aesthetic values in literature and art music rather than the social and political themes. In contrast, decadence is the cultural fall-away of these activities due to excessive indulgence in pleasure that challenges traditional values and morals.
sold
ANTIQUE
Fawn
Sculptural Candlestick
Europe, XIX Century
Probably Italian, 19th Century patinated bronze candlestick in form of a dancing Fawn holding a candle-vessel in his hands, on its original wood base.
DIMENSIONS Height: 10.75 inches Width: 5.75 inches Depth: 5.25 inches
$1,200
Antique
Hand-Carved Wood Lion’s Head
A Decoration from a Manhattan Bar
ca. 1880s
DIMENSIONS Height: 14 inches Width: 13 inches Depth: 12 inches
ABOUT THE OBJECT
This elaborately carved wood lion's head was an integral decorative piece of a bar counter or shelf unit in a Manhattan bar, and dates from around the 1880s. Since electricity was one of the main and newfangled inventions of that time, the small electric bulbs embedded in the lion's eyes are especially noteworthy.
$4,800
Bust of a Faun
Antique Patinated Bronze Sculpture
XIX Century
Unmarked, original wooden base.
Sculpture dimensions:
Height: 8.75 inches (21.87cm) Width: 5.25 inches (13.12cm) Depth: 5.75 inches (14.37cm)
Base dimensions:
Height: 1.75 inches (4.37cm) Width: 4.32 inches (10.8m) Depth: 3.75 inches (9.37 m)
$1,500
French Belle Epoque
Georges Van Der Straeten
A Book Reader
Gilded Bronze Sculpture, ca. 1888
Signed and dated on the bottom back.
Original marble base.
Dimensions: Height: 12.25 inches (30.62cm) Width: 4.88 inches (12.2cm) Depth: 3.75 inches (9.37cm)
GEORGES VAN DER STRAETEN (Flemish/French, 1856 ~ 1928) He trained as a lawyer, but turned to sculpture and studied under G. Kasteleyn and Jef Lambeaux. He exhibited at the Salon from 1885 until 1912. He worked and became friends with January van Beers. He received various awards, including a silver medal at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1900. He became Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1903. Van der Straeten G. demonstrated great technical mastery and achievements a high quality finish. He produced numerous portraits, busts imaginative graceful and alluring young Parisian women a little scoundrels and frivolous.
$3,500
After Evgeny Lanceray
A.M. Bonegor
Farewell Kiss
Patinated Bronze Sculpture
Russia, ca. 1900
SCULPTURE: ‘Farewell Kiss’.
DESCRIPTION: A farewell kiss is a fairly common theme in 19th century Russian sculpture. This particular composition is actually one of the variants of an earlier sculptural work on this topic by the famous Russian sculptor E.A. Lanceray, "Farewell of a Slav-Cossack woman, departure of a Cossack to the army" (circa 1875), which was inspired by the events of the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878. Excellent and detailed quality of bronze casting, life-like representation.
DESIGNER; Evgeny Alexandrovich Lansere (1848 - 1886) was a famous Russian sculptor of the 19th century; Lansere came from a family who came to Russia from France; he studied with the animal sculptor Nikolai Iwanowitsch Lieberich and specialized in the representation of horses and riders. In search of appropriate motifs, he traveled through the interior of both European and Asian Russia every year, and Algeria in 1883.
ARTIST: A.M. Bonegor
PERIOD: Ca. 1900
STYLE: Russian Imperial.
MEDIUM: Brown-patinated bronze, casting, chasing, mounting.
DIMENSIONS: H: 12.75” x L: 8.75” x W: 5.5”
MARKINGS: On the base, author's signature: «А.М. Bogenor».
CONDITION: The quality of the casting is superb. Sculpture retains original patina and has no damages or repairs.
sold
E. Naps After E. Lancere
Tsar's Falconer
Patinated Bronze Sculpture
Russia, ca. 1890’s
SCULPTURE: ‘Tsar's Falconer’.
DESCRIPTION: Excellent and detailed quality of the composition, very lifelike, finely detailed representation of a Tsar’s falconer, a main personage of every Tsar's grand hunting event.
DESIGNER; Evgeny Alexandrovich Lansere (1848 - 1886) was a famous Russian sculptor of the 19th century; Lansere came from a family who came to Russia from France; he studied with the animal sculptor Nikolai Iwanowitsch Lieberich and specialized in the representation of horses and riders. In search of appropriate motifs, he traveled through the interior of both European and Asian Russia every year, and Algeria in 1883.
ARTIST: Evgeny Ivanovich Naps (b.? - d.?) was a self-taught sculptor, restorer, draftsman and painter. In St. Petersburg he was engaged in the restoration of porcelain, small plastics and bronze sculpture for antique dealers and collectors. He created small copies and variations of the works of Russian sculptors for the capital factories producing bronze sculpture. The bronze statuettes created by Naps were bought by representatives of different walks of life.
NOTE: There is a version in existence that under the name of the famous Russian sculptor Naps was hiding none other than Lanceray. Many sculptors of that time had to resort to the practice of working under pseudonyms in connection with the contracts they concluded with one factory. Such an enslaving agreement forbade craftsmen to work in other factories under their own names. Lanceray Senior, the father of six children, had constant money problems, which could be the main reason for working under the name of Naps. In addition, almost nothing is known about Naps himself, and his works were executed in the same style and using the same techniques as the sculptures of Lanceray.
PERIOD: Ca. 1890’s
STYLE: Russian Imperial.
MEDIUM: Black-patinated bronze, casting, chasing, mounting.
DIMENSIONS: H: 12.25” x D: 3:75” x L: 7.75”
MARKINGS: On the base, author's signature:«ЛЪП. Е. НАПСЪ».
CONDITION: The quality of the casting is superb. Sculpture retains original patina and has no damages or repairs.
$3,500
French belle epoque
Alexandre Henri Devaulx
Centaur nursing her baby
Ca. 1880
HALLMARKS: Signed “A.H. Devaulx”, and marked “Susse Fes Ed.20”
DIMENSIONS: Height: 6-7/8” (17.2cm) | Width: 7-7/8” (19.7cm) | Depth: 4-1/4” (10.6cm)
MATERIALS: Gilded bronze.
CONDITION: Excellent antique condition, wear consistent with age and use.
The SCULPTURE.
This wonderfully unusual desktop sculpture of gilded bronze, depicting a beautiful female-centaur breastfeeding her cub is made in a classic romantic style of that era by a remarkable French sculptor, François Théodore Devaulx.
The SCULPTOR.
Alexandre Henri Devaulx (French, 1856-1940) was the son of the noted sculptor of Romanticism era, François Théodore Devaulx (1808–1870). Born in Paris, he studied under E. Devaulx, making his début as a sculptor at the 1876 Paris Salon with Portrait, a plaster medallion. Devaulx became a member of the Artistes Français in 1888, winning an award with merit in the same year....
The FOUNDRY.
Susse Frères Bronze Foundry, Paris. The French firm Susse Frères manufactured a daguerreotype camera, which was one of the first two photographic cameras ever sold to the public. The Susse Frères firm was also engaged in the foundry business and owned a large foundry in Paris. The company is well-known for their fine bronze castings with superbly applied patinas.
$3,500
Emmanuel Frémiet
Gallic Chief on Horseback
Antique French Patinated Bronze Sculpture
Ca. 1880
HALLMARKS: Signed “E Fremiet”; foundry mark “F. Barbidienne, Fondeur”
MATERIALS: Painted bronze.
DIMENSIONS: Height: 15-3/4” (39.4cm) | Width: 4-3/4”(11.9cm) | Depth: 10-3/4”(27cm
CONDITION: Good antique condition, original patina. Wear consistent with age and use.
The SCULPTURE.
We are pleased to offer for sale this exceptional example of a very fine antique (circa 1880's) French figural sculpture by an outstanding sculptor, Emmanuel Frémiet. This exceptional work of art in a very fine bronze with original dark brownish black patina depicts a Gallic chief during the Roman-Gallic War (58-50 BC) on horseback, dressed in full military gear, including a helmet and a shield on his back; the warrior has a sword and hatchet on his waist, and a tall spear on the shoulder. The horse under the rider is also dressed in marching armor - the skin of an animal under the saddle, the harness and net-like blanket, covering the horse’s croup, artistically woven from leather. On the back of the horse's blanket is a jetton with "S.P.Q.R." inscription on it, which is an abbreviation for Senātus Populusque Rōmānus (Classical Latin: [sɛˈnaːtʊs pɔpʊˈlʊskᶣɛ roːˈmaːnʊs]; English: "The Roman Senate and People"; or more freely "The Senate and People of Rome"). It was an emblematic abbreviated phrase, referring to the government of the ancient Roman Republic.
The SCULPTOR.
Emmanuel Frémiet (1824 – 1910) was a renown French sculptor, most famous for his grand sculpture of Joan of Arc in Paris (and its "sister" statues in Philadelphia and Portland, Oregon in the United States of America), as well as the monument to Ferdinand de Lesseps in Port-Saïd in the Suez.
In addition to his monumental works commissioned by the state, he is highly recognized as an excellent realistic animal sculptor. Emmanuel Frémiet was mainly devoted to equestrian statues. He began as a scientific lithographer (osteology) and worked in the workshop of painters in the morgue.
In 1843, he sent a gazelle study to the Salon, a prelude to prolific production. His Wounded Bear and his Wounded Dog were acquired by the State for the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris, in 1850. During the 1850s, Frémiet produced works on the theme of Napoleon I. He exhibited bronzes representing Napoleon III bassets at the Salon of 1853. From 1855 to 1859, he produced a series of statuettes on a military subject for the emperor. He created the Monument to Napoleon I in 1868 and that of Louis d'Orléans in 1869 (Pierrefonds castle). In 1874, he designed the first Joan of Arc Monument, erected on the Place des Pyramides in Paris, which he replaced following criticism of proportions with another version in 1903. During this period, he also created no less famous ‘Pan and the cubs’ (Paris, Musée d'Orsay).
At the end of the 19th century, a fashionable theme inspired Frémiet and other artists: that of the confrontation between Man and the Beast. A news story reported by the newspaper Le Temps reported that in a Gabonese village, a lost and furious gorilla would have abducted and molested a woman, after having destroyed huts, in 1880.
In addition, the accounts of explorers like Alfred Russel Wallace fill newspaper articles and engravings illustrating the attack on a Malaysian tracker by an orangutan. This theme inspires Frémiet with several major works. In 1893, Frémiet created the Monument to Velázquez for the garden of the Colonnade in the Louvre palace in Paris and, in 1897, the summit statue of Saint Michael slaying the dragon for the spire of the abbey church of Mont Saint-Michelle.
Frémiet was elected member of the Academy of Fine Arts in 1892 and succeeded Antoine-Louis Barye, as professor of animal drawing at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. He was a member of the Society of French Artists until 1908. His work was a great success in bronze cast by the Maison Barbedienne.
Emmanuel Frémiet died in Paris, where he is buried at the Passy cemetery. Gabriele Fauré has been at his side since 1924.
The FOUNDRY.
"F. Barbedienne, fondeur." - Ferdinand Barbedienne (1810 – 1892) was a French metalworker and manufacturer, who was famous, as a bronze founder – not only in his native France but around the world, as well. The son of a small farmer from Calvados, he started his career as a dealer in wallpaper in Paris. In 1838, he went into partnership with Achille Collas (1795-1859), who had just invented a machine to create miniature bronze replicas of statues. Together they started a business selling miniatures of antique statues from museums all over Europe, thus democratizing art and making it more accessible to households.
From 1843, they extended their scope by reproducing the work of living artists and diversified by making enameled household objects. With the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war in 1870, the firm briefly had to switch to cannon founding owing to the shortage of metals but resumed business afterwards.
Among the principal artists reproduced by the firm were Antoine Louis Barye, Auguste Rodin, Emmanuel Frémiet and other outstanding sculptors of the time.
Following Barbedienne's death in 1892, he was buried in the Père-Lachaise cemetery; and his nephew, Gustave Leblanc carried on the firm until 1952.
sold
French Belle Époque
Pierre-Eugène-Émile Hébert
The Wanderer
Patinated Bronze Sculpture
Ca. 1880s
Height: 24.75” Width: 10.5” Depth: 5.75”
Pierre-Eugène-Émile Hébert (French, 1823 – 1893)
A native Parisian, Hébert apparently lived and worked in the capital until his death. He was born in 1828, and studied sculpture privately, with his father Pierre (1804-1869) and Jean-Jacques Feuchère (1807-1852), both of whom pursued modestly successful careers in the Salon and as public sculptors beginning in the 1830s. Hébert learned extensively from their very divergent paths. Whereas Pierre Hébert, a laborer's son, trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Feuchère emerged within the art-bronze industry of his family, where he also prospered, providing various founders with models throughout his career. The latter was, in fact, one of the most masterful practitioners of the romantic anti-classical historical idiom, and particularly of the neo-medieval macabre; Feuchère is best known today for his sinuous figure of Satan, a serial bronze in various sizes. Emile Hébert is the able successor to both sculptors in all such categories.
Hébert began his Salon career during the Second Republic, with portrait busts of eminent sixteenth-century figures that were immediately purchased by the government. He then exhibited statuettes representing a variety of subjects--genre, classical mythologies, and the satanic. Well respected in official circles by the mid-1850s, Hébert was chosen, along with his father, to represent France in the Fine-Arts section of the 1855 Paris Universal Exposition. The state commissioned or acquired several of Hébert's works: a Bacchus for the Tuileries Palace (1866, present location unknown); personifications for the facade of the théâtre du Vaudeville, Paris; The Oracle, a marble relief (vestibule, Musée de Vienne, Isère); portrait-statues of great French writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries such as Jean-François Regnard (1880, facade, Hôtel de Ville, Paris) and François Rabelais (erected 1882, Quai Jeanne d'Arc, Chinon). Anne Pingeot discovered hitherto-unknown allegories by Hébert of anatomy and Etruscan art on the facade of the Nouveau Louvre (Pavillon Sully and between the Pavillons Daru and Denon, respectively, the latter signed and dated 1856). The sculptor showed regularly in the Salon until his death in 1893. Though he appears not to have had strong critical impact in Third-Republic exhibitions, the government of that time repeatedly chose Hébert's work to represent the nation internationally; his state-owned works appeared in the French Fine-Arts section of the 1873 Vienna Universal Exposition.
Thanks to Catherine Chevillot's unpublished research on nineteenth-century French foundries, it emerges that Hébert's lifetime reputation instead rests heavily upon his prolific work for the art-bronze industry throughout his career. Unlike most entrepreneurial animaliers and Carpeaux, who cast and marketed their own works, Hébert produced models for edition in bronze, plaster, and terracotta by other founders for at least thirty years. Though they frequently obtained reproduction rights, founders commonly identified Hébert as the sculptor in the catalogue and on the casts. He is recorded as providing models for a founder known only as E. Vittoz (a bronze Mephistopheles, for example); for another known only as E. Sévenier (a clock ornament of Hide-and-Seek, in addition to busts and groups); and for Auguste Gouge (Oedipus and the Sphinx, in bronze and plaster variants). Hébert's best-recorded and apparently longest-lived relationship, however, was with a founder today known only as G. Servant, whom the sculptor supplied with new models and variants of his Salon entries from the 1860s until Servant sold the business in 1882. Hébert's serial designs were thus seen and reviewed, possibly triggering orders at the founders' displays at the international exhibitions in London and on the continent through at least the 1870s. Nonetheless the studio sale after his death in 1893 reveals he retained reproduction rights and molds to many models, including his celebrated group Et Toujours!! Et Jamais!!
Known in various materials and sizes, Et Toujours!! Et Jamais!! remains Hébert's best-known work today. The plaster, shown in the Salon of 1859 (present location unknown), and the bronze, shown in the Salon of 1863 (possibly the 150-centimeter cast at the Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence), riveted the critics of the time, including Charles Baudelaire. Its poetically enigmatic title, darkly erotic "Death and the Maiden" treatment, Hugo-esque play on beauty and the grotesque, fluid, sinuous forms, and rippling textures reflect the mid-century romantic resurgence. Hébert, however, commanded a variety of modes. He was a superb modeler of the human form and of ornament, and manipulated both with great complexity, whether in monumental format or in small scale. Hébert's serial work especially reveals his modeling skill. His art bronzes range in subject from ancient mythologies--classical, Egyptian, and Mesopotamian--to contemporary athletes: boxers, rowers, champions. The sports figures often display the florid neo-baroque realism of his architectural decoration; so too the humorous moral allegories such as Ecole de filles [Girls' School]. Hébert often adjusted his style to historical subject: severe neo-Greek handling in his Thetis, Oracle, and Oedipus and the Sphinx; and stylized and rigid neo-Egyptian handling in his busts of Rameses and Isis. Some of his most intriguing work is in this historicizing mode, which provides especially useful insights into nineteenth-century French orientalism. Models in this vein for the founder Servant often reflect the eclecticism of better-known orientalist works by other artists in sculpture, painting, and theater that display an arresting mix of styles and ornament. However, Hébert also produced compositions that are tantalizingly advertised in sales catalogues as "restitutions" of known museum pieces: two sizes of the so-called Trophonius bust from the "Musée Assyrien" (the newly formed Assyrian collection at the Louvre), for example. Though unknown today, such a model could be a freely interpretative caprice on a known fragment or an earnest reconstruction.
Hébert's frequently poetic approach to his Salon works, sophisticated historicism of his serial work, and evident familiarity with museum collections suggest he was deeply engaged in the contemporary world of learning.
$7,800
French Belle Époque
Patinated Bronze Desktop
Sculptural Paperweight
19 Century
Signed illegibly | Original red marble base.
Dimensions: H: 8.25” x W: 3.25” x D: 4.25” | Base diameter: 2.75”
This beautiful and delicate desktop dark chocolate-brown patinated bronze sculptural paperweight depicts an angel, receiving a love letter from a dove. A perfect marriage between desk decoration and functionality.
$1,500
French Empire
Pair of Sphinx
Patinated Bronze Sculptures
1820s
Dimensions: Height: 17.5” Width: 6.5” Depth: 10”
This wonderfully cast, outstanding pair of black-patinated bronze Sphinx of the museum-quality are mounted on their original painted plaster bases.
Despite the fact that the sculptures are not signed, the finest exquisite workmanship and amazingly masterful study of all the details clearly gives away the hand of an outstanding artist-sculptor, who created them about two hundred years ago.
This matching pair of sculptures, in all likelihood, adorned a residence of one of the noblemen of that epoch; and today, more than ever, they certainly deserve a very close attention of most demanding connoisseurs and museums, representing 18th century European fine art.
sold
Carl Kauba
Native American with Tomahawk
Polychromed Vienna Bronze Sculpture
19th Century
Dimensions: Height: 16.75 inches Width: 4 inches Depth: 4 inches
Carl Kauba (Austrian, 1886 – 1922)
The son of an Austrian shoemaker , Carl Kauba was born on August 13, 1865. He began his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna with professor Laufenberg, Carl Waschmann and Stefan Schwartz and beginning 1886, he spent 2 years in Paris.
Kauba was part of the nineteenth-century tradition of polychrome bronze sculpture, using several types of patinas on a single statue. His western polychrome bronze subjects are highly sought after, although it is highly debatable that he ever visited America. His sculptures appear to have been copied from period photos. (Certain anomalies such as shod horses ridden by American Indians would suggest this.) In particular, Kauba made numerous animal bronzes and Indian depictions. These then came mostly to the United States. In 1897 he presented in the Vienna Künstlerhaus the bust of Pallas in red and yellow bronze.
Kauba also worked under the name of T.Curts, and Karl Thenn -- quite possibly for copyright reasons in Vienna, as he worked for more than one foundry. Thus, it is quite normal to find identical sculptures with any of these signatures
Kauba's intricate bronzes, imported to the United States between 1895 and 1912, were cast at the Roman Bronze Works and Gorham Foundry.
Carl Kauba died in his native Vienna, in 1922.
SOLD
Franz Xavier Bergman
Praying Muslim Man
Vienna Bronze Sculptural Paperweight
Circa 1900
Vienna cold-painted bronze.
Marked with "B" in an urn-shaped cartouche and the model number: 4137.
Dimensions:
Height: 4 3/4 inches Width: 4 5/8 inches Depth: 5 3/4 inches
Franz Xaver Bergman (1861–1936) was the owner of a Viennese foundry who produced numerous patinated and cold-painted bronze - Oriental, erotic and animal figures, the latter often humanized or whimsical, humorous objects d'art. Cold painted bronze refers to pieces cast in Vienna and then decorated in several layers with so called dust paint; the know-how for the mix of this kind of paint has been lost. The color was not fired hence "cold painted". The painting was carried out mainly by women working at home, a typical cottage industry. Noted for his detailed and colorful work, Bergman was signing his creations with either a "B" in an urn-shaped cartouche, or "Nam Greb" - for "Bergman" in reverse. These marks were used to disguise his identity on the erotic works.
SOLD
Antique
Bust of Cape Verde Island Native WOMAN
GLAZED TERRACOTTA
Colonial Portugal, ca. 1875
Dimensions: Height:12.13 in. (30.82 cm) Width: 7 in. (17.78 cm) Depth: 4.5 in. (11.43 cm)
This exquisite and very unusual sculptural bust of a woman in a folklore Cape Verde Island costume, wearing a coral necklace and a bright headscarf was made in the last quarter of XIX Century; probably, on the Portuguese colonial island of Cape Verde. Due to the peculiarities of the material and realistically rendered image, the skillfully selected colors under the well-preserved glaze are still pleasing to the eye with their brightness and freshness, creating an amazing life-like effect. Though clearly marked on the bottom with a circular crest and a bee (fly?) on top, we could not establish the exact name of the artist/maker.
$3,500
- Napoleon III PERIOD -
A Garniture of a Pair
sculptural Marble & Bronze Urns
Dimensions:
Height: 14 3/4 inches Width: 5 1/2 inches Base diameter: 4 7/8 inches
A garniture is a decoration for the top of a fireplace mantel. Most antique garnitures are composed of a clock with two matching vases, candelabra or other pieces. Some sets have two, three or five vases and no clock. The garniture was first used in 18th-century France to decorate the lower mantelpiece that had become fashionable. Made of bronze, porcelain and marble, by the 19th century the garnitures were widely embellishing fireplaces in England and the United States. Presented here is a good example of such object(s) of richly patinated & gilded bronze and red marble in the style of Napoleon III, whose reign period was during the time of the Second French Empire; the period between the Second and the Third Republic, in France.. The Bonapartist regime ofNapoleon III that lasted from 1852 to 1870 and had developed a certain style in arts, easily recognizable in the decorations used for the garniture - heads of Greek goddesses with fancy gilded headdresses; lion heads with holding movable rings in their grinning mouths; as well as tall and graceful but richly ornamented vase handles.
$1,800
"La charmeuse de serpent"
French Art Nouveau Bronze Sculpture of a Snake Charmer
by Michel-Léonard Béguine, Ca. 1900
Presented here for your attention is a charming sculpture, depicting a semi-nude slender girl who plays two flutes at the time to bewitch a snake, wriggling at her feet. It is a fine example of the then-fashionable trends of Orientalism in Art Nouveau movement. Cast with amazing subtlety of dark-brown patinated bronze and signed by the artist, the sculpture is installed on the original red marble pedestal of an original asymmetrical form, dominating over four spherical bronze feet.
Dimensions:
Total height: 18 inches Width: 6 1/2 inches Depth: 11 1/2 inches
Michel-Léonard Béguine (French, 1855 - 1929)
Michel-Léonard Béguine, a renowned French sculptor was born on August 9, 1855 in Uxeau. A student of Aimé Millet and Auguste Dumont, in 1878 he won an honorable mention at the Salon des Artistes and then, in 1887 - a Second Class medal. He also received Silver medals at the Universal Exhibitions of 1889 and 1900. A First Class medal Béguine received at the Salon of 1902 crowned his artist career. In recognition of his achievements in Frech art, Michel-Léonard Béguine was named Knight of the Legion of Honor on October 4, 1904. There are several monuments by Michel-Léonard Béguine commissioned by the city of Paris - for example a monument to Ernest Rousselle on Boulevard D'Italie, opened on October 6, 1921. Ernest Rousselle (1836-1896) was President of the municipal council of Paris. The sculptor died on March 29, 1929 in Paris and was buried at the Montparnasse cemetery. Béguine's works can also be found at a few French and international museums, as well as private collections around the world.
sold
ABOUT THE SCULPTURE
This sculpture depicting a weightlifter, lifting a heavy weight in his outstretched arm, draws audience attention not only by its perfect anatomical proportions and perfection of the male body, but also by the unusual rendering: the figure of an athlete is in a moving state with respect to the base, and the outstretched arm is visibly connected to the forearm by a detachable stud in the biceps area. The reason being that it is a prototype, or the very first sculpture, made specifically for its further replication by a foundry.
weightlifter
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Paul Marie Louis Pierre Richer (1849 - 1933) was a French anatomist, physiologist, anatomical artist and sculptor. He was professor of artistic anatomy at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, beginning in 1903. Richer worked with Jean-Martin Charcot at the Salpêtrière, and from 1882-96 was chief of the Salpêtrière Hospital laboratory. His medical research, done in collaboration with Charcot, was primarily in hysteria and epilepsy but, most importantly, he also studied the relationship between medicine and art. Richer was a professor of artistic anatomy at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, as well as a member of the Academie Nationale de Medicine (French Society for the History of Medicine) since 1898, and the president of which he became in 1907. The importance of his role as a teacher of many notable painters and sculptors in the 19th century Parisian art scene is difficult to overestimate. He also produced several sculptures that can be found in museums throughout Europe, including the Musee d'Orsay in Pasris. Paul Richer was also a prolific author in medicine, producing in his lifetime over 15 medical books with own outstanding illustrations.
Date of manufacture : c.1890
Period : End of 19th century
Country : France
Sculptor : Paul Marie Louis Pierre Richer (1849 - 1933)
Remarks : Signed "Paul Richer"
Height : 19 1/4 inches
Width : 12 1/2 inches
Depth : 4 1/4 inches
Medium : Bronze
Inventory number : S-19-0002
ABOUT THE SCULPTURE
This sculpture depicts a boxer in an English boxing pose of "direct punch", with his right arm outstretched in the direction of a imaginary rival. Audience's attention is not drawn only by the athlete's perfect anatomical proportions and, but also by the unusual rendering of the piece: the figure of an athlete is in a moving state with respect to the base, and his left hand is visibly connected to the wrist by a detachable stud. The reason being that it is a prototype, or the very first sculpture, made specifically for its further replication by a foundry.
sold
Florentine singer
This is one of Paul Dubois' best known works and the Musée d'Orsay holds a version in bronze cast by Maison Barbedienne, as well. It depicts a Florentine singer of the 15th century. The version in Orsay is 1.55 metres high. Dubois had put the plaster version of the work in the Paris Salon exhibition of 1865 and it had won him a "médaille d'honneur". Barbedienne produced limited editions in six different sizes between 1865 and 1953 and the Sèvres factory produced versions in biscuit in three different sizes. It is therefore a work often seen in France and it was also exhibited at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1867 and 1889.
Date of manufacture : 1869
Period : Second half of 19th century
Country : France
Sculptor : Paul Dubois (Belgian, 1829 - 1905)
Remarks : Signed "P.DVBOIS" and dated: 1869
Foundry stamp: F. Barbidienne Fondeur
Stamp: Reduction mechanique - A. Collas - Brevette
Height : 24 1/2 inches
Width : 10 1/2 inches
Depth : 7 1/2 inches
Medium : Bronze
Inventory number : S-19-00047
$5,500
mother with sleeping child
Jan Jozef Jacquet (1822-1898) was born in Antwerp, Belgium, and was a son of a baker. After studying with famous Guillaume Geefs at the Brussels Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts, he became a very weill-respected Belgian artist, who took part in sculpture by his own productions for the Brussels Art Salons of 1843, 1854, 1860, 1872 and 1873. He was also a life-long professor at the Brussels Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts.
Date of manufacture : c. 1875
Period : Second half of 19th century
Country : Belgium
Sculptor : Jan Jozef Jacquet (Belgian, 1822 - 18987)
Remarks : Signed "J.J.JACQUET"
Height : 12 inches
Width : 10 1/2 inches
Depth : 7 inches
Medium : Bronze
Inventory number : S-19-0008
sold
FRENCH BRONZE SCULPTURAL GROUP
Jean-Baptiste Auguste Clesinger
~ Dione and Aphrodite ~
XIX Century
Dimensions
Height : 14 1/2 inches Width : 26 1/2 inches Depth : 9 inches
Famous 19th-century French sculptor and painter, Jean-Baptiste Auguste Clesinger modeled his group on two figures from the east pediment of the Parthenon, now at the British Museum. The originals lack heads and arms, so Clesinger took artistic liberty with these features. Scholars think the figures represent either Dione and Aphrodite or a personification of the sea in the lap of the earth.
This grand, dark-brown patinated19th century bronze sculpture after the antique two classical reclining female figures in copious drapery has an A. Collas reduction seal mark in the lower part of the sculpture. This cast has been produced in collaboration with the F. Barbedienne Foundry in the last quarter of 19th Century.
Jean-Baptiste Auguste Clesinger (1814 - 1883) first exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1843 with a bust of Viconte Jules de Valdahon, and last exhibited there in 1864. At the 1847 Salon, he created a sensation with his sculpture "Woman bitten by a serpent", produced from life-casts from his model Apollonie Sabatier (the pose being particularly suitable for such a method), thus reinforcing the scandal with an erotic dimension. Apollonie Sabatier was a solonniere and the mistress of the world-famous poet, Charles Baudelaire, among many others. Clesinger died in Paris in 1883, and buried in the Pierre Lachaise Cemetery.
Literature: Catalogue des Bronzes d'Art F. Barbedienne, Recompenses Obtenues dans les Expositions Universelles,: Paris, 1886, p. 21.