Aristide Maillol

Estate of the artist
Lucien Maillol, Paris (by descent from the above)
Private Collection, France
Dina Vierny, Paris
Marlborough Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above in 2005

New York, Marlborough Gallery, Maillol and America, 2004, no. 19, illustrated in color in the catalogue

John Rewald, Maillol, London, 1939, illustration of another cast p. 70
Andrew C. Ritchie, ed., Aristide Maillol: With an Introduction and Survey of the Artist's Work in American Collections (exhibition catalogue), Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo, 1945, illustration of another cast p. 71
John Rewald, Maillol, Paris, 1950, illustration of another cast pl. 17
Artistide Maillol: 1861-1944 (exhibition catalogue), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1975, illustration of another cast p. 83
Gabriele Genge, Artekfakt, Fetisch, Skulptur: Artistide Maillol und die Beschreibung des Fremden in der Moderne, Munich, 2009, illustration of another cast p. 171

This work is in excellent condition. For the complete condition report prepared by Wilson Conservation, LLC please contact the Impressionist & Modern Art Department at +1 (212) 606-7360.
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The beauty of the female body fascinated Maillol throughout his career and the present sculpture is one of his most idealized representations. The work is a medley of formal quotations that calls to mind some of the greatest sculpture of the classical age. Standing with a raised foot forward and her arms lifted behind her head, the figure could be considered a reinterpretation of the Nike of Samothrace (see fig. 1). But Maillol's idealized first rendering of this figure at the beginning of the twentieth century is emphatically avant-garde, characterized by a sleek linearity that would define the Modernist aesthetic. Bertrand Lorquin describes the true artistry at the heart of Maillol's work: "Maillol's sculpture achieves an ideal balance through the accuracy of its proportions as well as the harmoniousness of its compositions. Paul Valéry once said that sculpture is an art full of surprises, and at each moment the sculptor chooses his viewpoint among an infinite array of possibilities. A Maillol statue is a perpetual revelation of the type of beauty which the sculptor invented" (Bertrand Lorquin, Aristide Maillol, Paris, 1995, pp. 102-03).