Gustave Fontaine

Gustave Fontaine (1877-1952), Selection of 2 sculptured plaster head models.

This pair of female torsos presumably decorated a fair stand or an organ in a theme park. They were most likely part of a significant organ intended to ente...

Although the 18th century, the period of the Enlightenment in France, spawned thinkers who criticized the privileges of the clergy and the truthfulness of certain dogmas, the Roman Catholic faith was very much present in everyday life. Since king Louis XIV had issued the Edict of Fontainebleau in 1685, Protestantism was banned from the country. This Madonna with child illustrates the daily practice of faith. Like many 18th-century Madonna statues...

Repousse sculptural plaque from the original Bezalel Art School in Jerusalem. This is marked "Made in Palestine" as it is from the British Mandate period. It is in an Orientalist design of the Tower of David. marked in Hebrew and English. Jerusalem's Bezalel School The Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, was founded in 1906 by Boris Schatz. In 1903, Schatz met Theodore Herzl and became an ardent Zionist. At the Zionist Congress of 1905, he proposed the idea of an art school in the Yishuv (early Jewish settlements), and in 1906 he moved to Israel and founded the Bezalel School of Art in Jerusalem. Bezalel, which was a school for crafts as well as for graphic art, became successful very rapidly. Schatz’s vision was to develop useful arts and crafts among Palestinian Jews, thereby decreasing the dependence on charity. At the same time, he sought to inspire his students to create a Jewish national style of the arts, in order to promote the Zionist endeavor. The inhabitants of 19th-century Palestine, both Jewish and non-Jewish, had produced mostly folk art, ritual objects and olive-wood and shell-work souvenirs, as well as oil painting, sculpture, tapestry and mosaics. So the founding of Bezalel provided a professional and ideological framework for the arts and crafts in Jerusalem. The school employed workers and students, of whom there were 450 in 1913, in manufacturing, chiefly for export, decorative articles ranging from cane furniture, inlaid frames and ivory and wood carvings, to damascene and silver filigree and repousse work. A major part of Schatz’s school was the workshops, which, starting with rug-making and silversmithing, eventually offered 30 different crafts. Workshops included the "Menorah" workshop where they designed relief and souvenirs made of terra-Cotta, and the Sharar, Stanetsky and Alfred Salzmann workshops where Menorah lamps...

Exotic carved teak sculpture. The sentinel with his sword drawn. 19th century architectural artifact.