19th & 20th Century European Sculpture

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Lot 88
  • 88

Jacques Louis Gautier French, b.1831

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Description

  • Jacques Louis Gautier
  • Mephistophélès et La Sorcière (Mephistopheles and the Witch)

  • Mephistopheles signed: Jacques Gautier, inscribed Bronze d'art and entitled MÉPHISTOPHÉLÈS

    La Sorciere signed: Jacques Gautier, inscribed Bronze d'art and entitled LA SORCIERE DE MACBETH

  • bronze, dark brown patina

Catalogue Note

Gautier studied under François Rude and made his Salon début in 1850 with a bronze entitled Misery. The figure of Mephistopheles was modelled in the early 1850s and was exhibited at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1855 where it was a great success. Casts of the model were hugely popular and were to be found in such illustrious collections as those of the Duchess of Alba and Napoleon III. The figure was edited by Duplan and Salles. As Busquet, critic for L'Artiste, noted: 'They have edited this strange Mephistopheles with a long and grimacing profile which one can see, not without some surprise, in the showrooms of the principal stores in Paris.' Gautier created a pendant for Mephistopheles in the equally spindly and sinister Sorcière, inspired by the three witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth.

RELATED LITERATURE
Lami, vol.3, p.26; Romantics to Rodin, p. 281, no. 149; Shepherd Gallery, pp. 92-93