This Fontaine Pleureuse perhaps best represents the extraordinary artistic and creative collaboration that united Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne throughout their respective careers. The work relies on an anthropomorphic motif, quite rare across their œuvre as they often prioritized organic or animal subjects. Its concept originally derived from Claude’s very own La Dormeuse (“Sleeping woman”), designed in 1974 and depicting the head of a sleeping woman placed horizontally and coiffed with a lattice of branches and leaves in anodized copper. This charming sculpture served as the basis for François-Xavier’s sketches of a large-scale spring where water trickled down the eyes of a human head. The drawings were used as models for a small number of sculptures that include the present lot, bringing this reverie to life through a combination of epoxy stone and travertine. A monumental example of the form in marble is in the collections of the Hakone Museum in Japan. Fountains evidently hold a special place in the Lalannes’ artistic vocabulary, with examples ranging from Claude’s Olympe to François-Xavier’s topiary dinosaur fountains. The Fontaine Pleureuse captures the essence of the artist duo, embodying in a single sculpture the creative collaboration and constant exchange of ideas that contributed to their sensational success.