Jean-Baptiste, called Auguste Clésinger

Possibly Ferdinand Barbedienne (1810-1892);

private collection, Normandy, France

Clésinger’s career was characterised by a remarkable self-belief and ambition. The son of a moderately successful sculptor, Clésinger studied briefly and impatiently under Thorvaldsen and David d’Angers. He wrote to his sister from Rome: ‘I have seen all the sculptors' ateliers…; none of them have half my talent.’ Returning to Paris, Clésinger cultivated friendships with art critics in order to ensure favourable reception for his works. He even went so far as to marry the daughter of the writer and critic George Sand, though the marriage was unsuccessful and short-lived. Following negative criticism of his monument to Francis I in Paris in the mid-1850s, Clésinger felt personally aggrieved and removed to Rome, where he set up an atelier and lived in splendour. After a number of years of absence from the Paris Salon, Clésinger re-entered it in prodigious style, sending eight sculptures in 1859 and six, including his Cléopâtre, (sold in these rooms on 12 July 2017, lot 19) in 1861. These works, asserted the critic Gautier, attested ‘no less to his talent as to his abundance.’

The present marble retains its originally, beautifully carved and polished, surface. The Automne, Allegory of Autumn, served as the model for numerous bronze reductions in various sizes by the Barbedienne foundry. It is possible that the present marble was once in the ownership of the famed foundry as Rionnet illustrated a drawing of Barbedienne's marble, which was also dated 1864 and executed in Rome (op. cit.).

RELATED LITERATURE

F. Rionnet, Les Bronzes Barbedienne: L'Oeuvre d'un Dynastie de Fondeurs, Paris, 2016, p. 289, no. 537