Aristide Maillol

Dina Vierny
Acquired from the above on October 7, 1977

John Rewald, Aristide Maillol, London, Paris & New York, 1939, illustration of the terracotta study pl. 120
Maillol, Exposition-Hommage du Centenaire de sa naissance (exhibition catalogue), Galerie Daber, 1961, illustration of the terracotta study pl. 15
Aristide Maillol (exhibition catalogue), Perls Galleries, New York, 1970, no. 58, illustration of another version p. 40
Maillol au Palais des Rois de Majorque (exhibition catalogue), Musée Hyacinthe Rigaud-Perpignan, 1979, illustration of another version p. 110
Aristide Maillol (exhibition catalogue), Palais des Congrès, Perpignan, 2000, illustration of another version pl. 85

The model for the present work was Dina Vierny, whom the artist first met in 1937. A beautiful young woman of Russian origin, Vierny bore a striking resemblance to some of the artist's voluptuous nudes from the 1900s. Vierny's introduction to Maillol at the end of the 1930s brought about a renewal of his art and provided him with the inspiration to create monumental sculptures in his final years. Considering Vierny the ideal of feminine beauty, Maillol would make her his principle model from thence forward and the present work is a small version of one of the first sculptures for which she posed.   Speaking of her first experiences with the artist, Vierny recalled the following of Maillol's works of this time: "I began posing for large monumental drawings and for the carving of Nymphs...Next came The Mountain, for which he returned to projects he had had at the beginning of his life, but with a certain change in the conceptions that determined his work....Maillol started out with the pose of a seated woman which he had imagined as early as 1900. It was a figure to which he often returned in his career, tirelessly seeking to reconstruct the articulation of its volumes. He sculpted several statuettes before moving on to the monumental figure'' (quoted in Bertrand Lorquin, Aristide Maillol, New York, 1995, pp. 137-38).