Rare Art Deco Roland Paris Porcelain Pierrot Sculpture Lamp

Art Deco bronze with green and brown patina around 1930. Bronze clown on Portor marble base. Signed Roland Paris on the embankment. Notes of micro scratches on the marble. Total height: 53cm Base: 13cm x 46.5cm Weight: 16 Kg Friedrich Richard Roland Paris (March 18, 1894 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary - May 4, 1945 in Swinemünde, Germany) was a German caricaturist, writer of satirical verse, graphic designer, painter and Art Deco sculptor. Roland Paris attended the Grand-Ducal Realgymnasium in Weimar from 1905. From 1909, he was a student at the Saxon Grand-Ducal School of Applied Arts in Weimar. Here, in 1912, he received second and third prizes as well as 25 points in a competition for the design of emblems for student associations, which he continued to produce for two or three years. Some of these works showed the influence of Art Nouveau, others included more modern approaches. In 1912, Paris took a course in sculpture at the Saxon Grand-Ducal School of Art in Weimar with the sculptor Gottlieb Elster. He then went to Munich, where he completed internships with several sculptors. In 1913, he returned to the school of Fine arts in Weimar and studied painting with Walther Klemm. In June 1915 he received his call up order for the Eastern Front of World War I and served first in a commando unit and then in the Air Force Inspectorate (IdFlieg) . After his return in 1919, he settled in Berlin. In 1924 he married Elisabeth Lisl Austen (b. 1897), a dancer at the Théâtre des Westens who modeled most of his female characters; he depicted himself for the facial parts of his male characters. The marriage remained childless. Their shared one-bedroom apartment in the backyard of Xantener Strasse 11 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf was also the Paris Studio, where he designed and made many of his sculptures, as well as graphics and paintings...

Beautifully modelled, molded and glazed, this pair of sculptures was originally designed to serve as tabletop torchere lamps, with light washing the wall above, and lighting the eyes of each head. Very finely crafted, the sculptures were made by Doane Powell, an important Nebraska cartoonist and illustrator who later became famous for the masks he made of celebrities such as Mae West, Governor Huey Long...