Joseph-Antoine Bernard (1866-1931) - Lot 81

Lot 81
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Estimation :
50000 - 60000 EUR
Joseph-Antoine Bernard (1866-1931) - Lot 81
Joseph-Antoine Bernard (1866-1931) Young girl with jug Model created in 1910; Edition known as "état petite nature" by C. Valsuani; Circa 1920-1931 Bronze with brown patina Signed "J. Bernard Bears the founder's stamp "C. VALSUANI CIRE PERDUE" FOUNDRY STAMP Numbered "N°17" and "©". H. 64 cm Related works: - Joseph Bernard, Jeune fille à la cruche, plaster, H. 64 x W. 26 x D. 32 cm, Paris, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, inv. 23781 ; - Joseph Bernard, Jeune fille à la cruche, reduction, bronze, signed on the base, stamped "cire perdue C. Valsuani", H. 64 x W. 22 x D. 32 cm, Lisbon, Calouste Gulbenkian Museum; Related literature: -René Jullian, Joseph Bernard, Saint-Rémy-les-Chevreuses, Ed. Fondation de Coubertin, 1989, model listed under no. 154, p. 301; - Joseph Bernard, 1866-1931, cat. exp. exhibition, Lisbon, Museo Calouste Gulbenkian, May-June 1992, model no. 18, p. 100. - Sylvie Carlier, Alice Massé, Joseph Bernard, de pierre et de volupté, cat. exp. Villefranche-sur-Saône, musée Paul Dini, October 18, 2020-April 25, 2021, Roubaix, La Piscine-musée d'art et d'industrie André-Diligent, March 20-June 20, 2021, Gand, Editions Snoeck, 2020, pp. 220-221. Created by Joseph Bernard, this bronze sculpture of a young woman with sensual, graceful nudity, carrying a jug in a position of charming instability, is undoubtedly the most iconic work by this artist, who throughout his career was sensitive to feminine beauty and the search for simplification of form. The original plaster model welcoming visitors to the room dedicated to the 1925 Exhibition in the fine presentation "Le Paris de la Modernité", held in winter 2024 at the Petit Palais in Paris, is a reminder of the intense infatuation with this smooth-bodied, swaying female idol in the years following its creation. The work, described by the painter Jacques-Emile Blanche as "a cry of curiosity, astonishment and admiration", seems to have had a first version with the left arm outstretched in 1905/1907, a period when feminine beauty and movement were intensely occupying the sculptor. A second version was completed in 1910. Measuring 184 cm high, it was presented at the Salon d'Automne in 1912, where critics succumbed to its charm and admired the modernity of its synthetic character: "...Twenty-three beautiful silhouettes, simplified at first by the half-light, soon assert themselves. The initial impression is reminiscent of Hindu statuary, so extraor- dinary with life. Superimposed on this is a memory of the eginotic marbles and sculpted rocks that Bacchus, on his Asian journey, scattered as far as the caves of present-day Lolos. It's only in the study that the detail reveals the artist's personality: "A naked girl returns from the fountain; weak but supple, she carries the pitcher of drawn water; O pleasant prettiness, happy peace, fine beauty!" (La Plume, November 1, 1912, p.9/20). An example was cast in bronze before 1914, and acquired by the French state in 1917 for the Musée du Luxembourg: the artist thus entered the Pantheon of living artists. The subject was then exhibited in its original size or in its life-size state, in plaster or bronze, at all the major international and retrospective exhibitions where the artist was represented. To name but a few: the Armory Show in New York in 1913, the Galerie des Arts in 1914, the Pavillon du Collectionneur from 1925 to his major retrospective in 1932 at the Musée de l'Orangerie, and, most recently, Le Paris de la Modernité at the Petit Palais in 2024. Our copy corresponds to the "état petite nature" edition produced by the Claude Valsuani foundry, of which twenty-eight proofs were cast out of the fifty originally planned. The artist's archives mention two proofs of the reduced version of this model, numbered "17" for our bronze and "17 bis" for the copy in the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum.
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