By Thiebaut Freres, Georges Gardet
Located in Shippensburg, PA
A powerful group of two panthers engaged in combat, it was initially sculpted by Gardet in 1896 and presented at the Paris Salon of the same year as Les Panthères. There was received with acclaim by the Gazette des Beaux-Arts:
"Le merveilleux est la souplesse des peaux sous lesquelles on voit s'amasser les muscles, se detendre les nerfs, palpiter les organs... L'artiste a su, par une patientre patine, apparenter le grain au pelage vrai des fauves [The beauty is in the suppleness of the skin under which we see the muscles amass, the nerves relax and the organs throb... The artist has, through a patient patina, simulated the grain of the coat true of the wild animals]"
Large and dramatic in scale, the model captures the sheer ferocity of the creatures as their lean muscled bodies twist and writhe in a mortal dance. The rocky naturalistic base is signed in block G. GARDET and is sealed along the back with the foundry cachet for Thiebaut. The surface is finished in a dark-brown overall patina sealed under wax.
An example executed in marble is held in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (acc. no. 21.32). For similar examples, see Christies, sale 1774, 18 April 2006, lot 19, a much smaller 11 3/4" model cast by Thiebaut Freres that achieved $ 10,200 USD; also see Christies, sale 5959, 9 August 2010, lot 605...
Category
20th Century French Romantic Georges Gardet