PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE NEW YORK COLLECTOR
Aristide Maillol
MÈRE ET ENFANT
LOT SOLD.
125,000 USD
Details & Cataloguing
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Aristide Maillol
1861 - 1944
MÈRE ET ENFANT
Signed with the artist's monogram (lower right)
Oil on board
16 7/8 by 14 in.
42.8 by 35.5 cm
Painted circa 1895.
Read Condition Report
Read Condition Report
Oil on board
16 7/8 by 14 in.
42.8 by 35.5 cm
Painted circa 1895.
This work will be included in the forthcoming Aristide Maillol catalogue raisonné being prepared by the Musée Maillol Paris.
Provenance
Jos Hessel, Paris (acquired by 1928)
Fairfax Hall, Virginia (probably acquired from the above)
Private Collection (and sold: Christie's, London, June 22, 1993, lot 126)
Acquired at the above sale
Fairfax Hall, Virginia (probably acquired from the above)
Private Collection (and sold: Christie's, London, June 22, 1993, lot 126)
Acquired at the above sale
Exhibited
Paris, Galerie de la Renaissance, Exposition portraits et figures de femmes, Ingres à Picasso, 1928, no. 105
Catalogue Note
While primarily known as a sculptor, Maillol painted throughout his career, and this aspect of his practice played a crucial role in his artistic evolution. The present work is a tender depiction of a mother nursing. It is very similar to Maurice Denis' mother and child paintings of 1895, and indeed the ideas of the Nabis group founded by Denis and Sérusier are crucial to our understanding of Maillol's paintings (see fig. 1). As Denis argued, "it must not be forgotten that a picture, before it is revealed as a battle-charger, a nude or some narrative or other, is fundamentally a flat surface covered with colour arranged in a certain order... the word décor has no pejorative meaning" (quoted in Waldemar George, Aristide Maillol, London, 1965, pp. 75-76).
The work is still and calm in its intimate domesticity, yet simultaneously dynamic in the lyricism of the winding forms of the fabric in the background, the mother's head and neck and even the flowers in the foreground. The painting's domestic setting, harmonic palette, and its decorative forms evoke similar scenes by Édouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard.
In 1950, the poet Pierre Camo described the women Maillol depicted as "daughters of the earth," remarking upon "the line of a beautiful neck, the swelling breasts" and arguing that "no other artist since Renoir has loved and looked, caressed with his eyes, nor admired so voluptuously; nor has anyone but Maillol depicted the female form with such sensuous grace" (quoted in Pierre Camo, Maillol Mon Ami, Lausanne, 1950, p. 218).
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