Large Figure of a Nude Titled "Phryne, " Artist Signed Falguiere

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Large Figure of a Nude Titled "Phryne, " Artist Signed Falguiere

About the Item

Falguiere was considered by many to be among the greatest artists working in bronze during the third quarter of the 19th century. So many artists studied under him and achieved fame themselves. This luscious bronze rotates on the marble base. The same model on a different base recently sold at auction for nearly $40,000. Our price is a lot friendlier. Read on: A decade before Gérôme turned his own hand to sculpture in 1878, he and his brother-in-law - the founder Adolphe Goupil - conceived the idea that the popular painting, Phyrné before the Areopagus, should be rendered in three dimensions. Goupil commissioned Falguière to model the figure, which he did using not only the painting, but also the many studies produced for it, including Nadar's two photographic prints of the model Marie-Christine Leroux. The painting depicted the trial of Phyrné, the famously beautiful courtesan of ancient Greece. Accused of profaning the Eleusinian Mysteries, a capitol offence, she was brought before the Athenian judges. At the moment of sentencing, her advocate, the orator Hyperides, swept off the courtesan's clothes, revealing a body so beautiful that the judges were unable to condemn this divine-looking being to death. Gérôme's painting, exhibited at the Salon in 1861, caused considerable controversy as Phyrné, shielding her face with her arm, seems to shrink from the lascivious gaze of the multitude of male judges. It shocked the art world not only for its indecency, but for its modernity. The realism of Gérôme's nude affronted even the liberal novelist Émile Zola who saw in it 'a modern mistress caught changing into her nightdress'. It was caricatured and parodied in the press, but the painting was a runaway success. The sculptural version, which removes the unsettling reaction of the judges, is not so controversial, but focuses simply on the beauty of the goddess-like nude. A recent study on Goupil and Gérôme by Florence Rionnet notes that versions of the bronze Phryné with the present square base on raised feet with the Greek catrouche resting on a palm are particularly rare. Related Literature: L. des Cars et. al., The Spectacular Art of Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904), exhin. cat., The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 2010, pp. 104-109, no. 47. Léon Gérôme’s painting Phryne Before the Aeropagus (Hamburg Kunsthalle) was exhibited at the Salon of 1861 and was received with mixed reviews. While Degas thought that Phryne should not hide her head in shame but proudly show her beauty, a critic named Albert de la Fizelière wrote: “[this] ugly woman, with her unsightly great feet!...This skinny, knock-kneed Phryne whose flat hips still bear the mark of the corset, just as her legs show the line of her garter and who is nothing but a brazen wench.” (quoted after F. Rionnet, see below). Adolphe Goupil, Gérôme’s father-in-law, a successful art-dealer and publisher of photo engravings after Salon paintings, was not deterred by such considerations. In 1867, when Gérôme’s painting was re-exhibited at the Universal Exhibition, Goupil came out with a bronze statuette after the figure of Phryne in the painting, commissioned from Alexandre Falguière. The already popular young sculptor had just won a medal at the 1867 Salon for the plaster model of Tarcisius. Florence Rionnet observed, that Falguière did not merely copy the figure, but slightly “corrected” it, to evade the earlier criticism. “He smoothed out the volumes, fined down the body, accentuated the girl’s modest gesture by moving the left leg to cover the right knee, then restored the balance of this gesture by a contraposto, which gave the figure a twist which it did not have in the painting. By modelling it in this way, Falguière managed to idealize the figure, giving it an ethereal grace which pleased people with a fondness for statuettes and removed all hint of scandal.” (p. 49). Gérôme, who began showing his own sculpture in 1878, seems to have approved, because Falguière’s Phryne was offered by his father-in-law in various sizes and materials throughout the nineteenth century. Most casts bear the mark Goupil, who was the editor. DeCourcy E. McIntosh researched the sales books of M. Knoedler & Co. through 1879. He found that eight editions of Phryne were imported in about ten years, five in gilt patination, two in patinated bronze and one marble (courtesy of the author.) References: Florence de Rionnet, “Goupil and Gérôme: Two Views of the Sculpture Industry” in Gérôme and Goupil, Art and Enterprise, exhibition catalogue, Dahesh Museum of Art, New York, 2001, pp. 45-54. We have a copy of the painting showing this figure and we can easily send that to any interested parties. We could not fit it on this page. This is truly one of the great bronzes produced during the 19th century.

Creator:
Jean Alexandre Joseph Falguière 1 (Artist)
Dimensions:
Height: 32 in (81.28 cm)Diameter: 13 in (33.02 cm)
Style:
Neoclassical (Of the Period)
Materials and Techniques:
Bronze,Marble,Beveled,Cast
Place of Origin:
France
Period:
1870-1879
Date of Manufacture:
circa 1870s
Condition:
Seller Location:
Petaluma, CA
Reference Number:
1stDibs: 1505268799797

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