Jean-Baptiste Clésinger Art

William King (1925-2015). Reclining figure, ca. 1965. Cast and welded bronze, 7 x 9.5 x 5 inches. Unsigned. William King, a sculptor in a variety of materials whose human figures traced social attitudes through the last half of the 20th century, often poking sly and poignant fun at human follies and foibles, died on March 4 at his home in East Hampton, N.Y. He was 90. His death was confirmed by Scott Chaskey, who is married to Mr. King's stepdaughter, Megan Chaskey. Mr. King worked in clay, wood, bronze, vinyl, burlap and aluminum. He worked both big and small, from busts and toylike figures to large public art pieces depicting familiar human poses -- a seated, cross-legged man reading; a Western couple (he in a cowboy hat, she in a long dress) holding hands; a tall man reaching down to tug along a recalcitrant little boy; a crowd of robotic-looking men walking in lock step. But for all its variation, what unified his work was a wry observer's arched eyebrow, the pointed humor and witty rue of a fatalist. His figurative sculptures, often with long, spidery legs and an outlandishly skewed ratio of torso to appendages, use gestures and posture to suggest attitude and illustrate his own amusement with the unwieldiness of human physical equipment. His subjects included tennis players and gymnasts, dancers and musicians, and he managed to show appreciation of their physical gifts and comic delight at their contortions and costumery. His suit-wearing businessmen often appeared haughty or pompous; his other men could seem timid or perplexed or awkward. Oddly, or perhaps tellingly, he tended to depict women more reverentially, though in his portrayals of couples the fragility and tender comedy inherent in couplehood settled equally on both partners. Mr. King's work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, among other places, and he had dozens of solo gallery shows in New York and elsewhere. But the comic element of his work probably caused his reputation to suffer. Reviews of his exhibitions frequently began with the caveat that even though the work was funny, it was also serious, displaying superior technical skills, imaginative vision and the bolstering weight of a range of influences, from the ancient Etruscans to American folk art to 20th-century artists including Giacometti, Calder. and Elie Nadelman. The critic Hilton Kramer, one of Mr. King's most ardent advocates, wrote in a 1970 essay accompanying a New York gallery exhibit that he was, "among other things, an amusing artist, and nowadays this can, at times, be almost as much a liability as an asset." A "preoccupation with gesture is the focus of King's sculptural imagination," Mr. Kramer wrote. "Everything that one admires in his work - the virtuoso carving, the deft handling of a wide variety of materials, the shrewd observation and resourceful invention - all this is secondary to the concentration on gesture. The physical stance of the human animal as it negotiates the social arena, the unconscious gait that the body assumes in making its way in the social medium, the emotion traced by the course of a limb, a torso, a head, the features of a face, a coiffure or a costume - from a keen observation of these materials King has garnered a large stock of sculptural images notable for their wit, empathy, simplicity and psychological precision." William Dickey King...

A fine late 19th century antique French bronze sculpture group, of a pair of race horses & jockeys, by Paul Louis Emile Loiseau-Rousseau, Paris (1861-1927). The bronze circa 1895 de...

Antique Bronze Dog Sculpture Chihuahua "La Petite Belle Lydie" Charles Valton (French, 1851-1918) Circa 15 1/2 x 10 1/4 x 7 Lydie is a Chihuahua making her a very rare image from ...

A good antique Italian Grand Tour Bronze and marble bust of Dante Alighieri, circa 1880. The bronze is most likely Florentine and mod...

Formed by two exquisitely defined figures, one the archetype of male perfection, and the other reflecting an image of the ideal female form, these two figures mirror each other, and ...

EDITION Monogrammed : FXL Dated : 2003 Numbered EA 2/4B Stamped with foundry mark : bocquel fd. PROVENANCE Marie Lalanne former collection, daughter of the artist. LITERATURE W....

Agnes Yarnall LePage, began studying sculpture at the age of 6 at the Liberty Tadd School of Modeling. She went on to study with Charles Grafly at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts before opening her own studio in the late 1920s, with the support of her parents, Anna B. Coxe and Charlton Yarnall. Over the years, Ms. Yarnall's work included numerous portraits, human figures and animal sculptures. Among her proudest achievements were busts of George Washington and General Lafayette, displayed at the Valley Forge Historical Society, and of Abraham Lincoln, at the Union League of Philadelphia. She also counted among her premier accomplishments busts she sculpted of Ronald Reagan, Jack Nicklaus and Pope John Paul II. One reviewer who had seen her depictions of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dame Judith Anderson, Carl Sandburg and Sir John Gielgud lauded her work for its ''sensitivity, grace and dynamism," her family said. During her early career Ms. Yarnall studied and worked with such great artists as Boris Blai, Paul Manship and Alexander Archipenko. In addition to her long career in sculpture, she also was an accomplished poet. Her books included Indian Summer, Hesperides and Other Poems and Pandora and Other Poems. In 1987 Ms. Yarnall was presented with the Living Legacy Award as ''Evocatrix Extraordinary" by the Women's International Center, joining such honorees as Dame Judith Anderson, Clare Boothe...

Mans Best Friend C.M. Junghans 1985 This is done in a German Expressionist style. It is bronze over some sort of fill. It depicts a man gentleman and his dog. a Cocker Spaniel or Co...

"Ballerina gold/blue" is a unique bronze scultpure (2023) of Bulgarian mid career artist Günay Aliev. In this sculpture the artist depicts a nude ballerina standing on her tows with...

Antique Bronze Portrait of a Draft Horse Isidore Jules Bonheur (France, 1827-1901) Circa 1840s Cast bronze mounted on a rectangular plinth atop a marble s...

Edward III is a tall, elegant bronze sculpture of a human figure. Nando Kallweit is a German sculptor working in bronze and oak. Kallweit carves the original piece from a piece o...

"Pair of Lovers" bronze sculpture on wooden base of male and female seated figures by artist Moshe Sternschuss. Signature Sternschuss and edition number 153/200 inscribed on side of ...