Lot Essay
Gérôme's first attempts at sculpture date from around 1859. Helped by his sculptor friend Frémiet, the mature, extremely successful painter threw himself with enthusiasm into this new medium. "La facture n'est qu'une question d'épiderme. La construction, bien construire, il n'y a que ça". In rehabilitating the technique of polychroming white marble, Gérôme was continuing a trend begun in the 1850's by Cordier whose mixture of painting, silvering and enamelling was a move toward Realism and a reaction against Romanticism in sculpture.
In the late 1870's, excavations of the city of Tanagra in Greece unearthed thousands of small painted terra-cotta figurines. This ancient industry was the perfect classical inspiration for Gérôme's latest adventure into the domain of sculpture, where the technique of polychromy matched in three dimensions the realist emphasis the artist had always given to his painted oeuvre.
By the late 1880's the artist had modeled the life-size plaster (now lost). The imposing marble sculpture of the "Tanagra" or protecting deity of the newly discovered town was executed for the 1890 Salon and purchased by the state for the Luxembourg Museum. Gérôme insisted that as a condition of sale the funds not be drawn from the official budget for the purchase of sculpture, to preserve that money for younger lesser-known artists. The marble, her polychrome coat (now invisible), reigns over the grand salle in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.
Only one life-size bronze was cast and used, after the artist's death, to decorate a monument to him at his birthplace of Vesoul. The Santa Barbara Museum in California has recently acquired a marble head of the "Tanagra" and a small number of reductions in bronze - either gilt or silvered - are also known.
This present version of "Tanagra" is smaller than her museum counterpart. Her size, the faint traces of polychromy, and the delicacy of the figurine in bronze in her hand make her a more accessible goddess.
The subject of the "Tanagra" appears several times in Gérôme's paintings (see: Le Travail du Marbre, Ackerman No 419, or "Colour breathes life into Sculpture" Ackerman, No 412). The "Tanagra" is the symbol of the Antique. The small figurine - "La Joueuse au Cerceau" that she holds represents Hellenistic sculpture. And the colour of her skin brings her as close as possible to the model who posed for her.
For Gerard Ackerman the "coloured Tanagra figures were a vindication of (Gôme's) practice of painting Neo-classical genre (as for example, his "Cock Fight" of 1847 (Musée d'Orsay, Paris)...Thus "Tanagra" is a recognition of the Realist sculptural tradition in Antiquity and its continuation in Gérôme's own time, a declaration by Gérôme of an "elective affinity" with a period in the past..."
There is a Chinese paradox effect, a sculpture holding a sculpture, the artist's stroke of genius being the contrast between the stasis of one containing the movement of the other. A beautiful creature of stone, immoveable, upon whom dances another woman whose toy, a hoop, also happens to be a symbol of perfection and plenitude.
In the late 1870's, excavations of the city of Tanagra in Greece unearthed thousands of small painted terra-cotta figurines. This ancient industry was the perfect classical inspiration for Gérôme's latest adventure into the domain of sculpture, where the technique of polychromy matched in three dimensions the realist emphasis the artist had always given to his painted oeuvre.
By the late 1880's the artist had modeled the life-size plaster (now lost). The imposing marble sculpture of the "Tanagra" or protecting deity of the newly discovered town was executed for the 1890 Salon and purchased by the state for the Luxembourg Museum. Gérôme insisted that as a condition of sale the funds not be drawn from the official budget for the purchase of sculpture, to preserve that money for younger lesser-known artists. The marble, her polychrome coat (now invisible), reigns over the grand salle in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.
Only one life-size bronze was cast and used, after the artist's death, to decorate a monument to him at his birthplace of Vesoul. The Santa Barbara Museum in California has recently acquired a marble head of the "Tanagra" and a small number of reductions in bronze - either gilt or silvered - are also known.
This present version of "Tanagra" is smaller than her museum counterpart. Her size, the faint traces of polychromy, and the delicacy of the figurine in bronze in her hand make her a more accessible goddess.
The subject of the "Tanagra" appears several times in Gérôme's paintings (see: Le Travail du Marbre, Ackerman No 419, or "Colour breathes life into Sculpture" Ackerman, No 412). The "Tanagra" is the symbol of the Antique. The small figurine - "La Joueuse au Cerceau" that she holds represents Hellenistic sculpture. And the colour of her skin brings her as close as possible to the model who posed for her.
For Gerard Ackerman the "coloured Tanagra figures were a vindication of (Gôme's) practice of painting Neo-classical genre (as for example, his "Cock Fight" of 1847 (Musée d'Orsay, Paris)...Thus "Tanagra" is a recognition of the Realist sculptural tradition in Antiquity and its continuation in Gérôme's own time, a declaration by Gérôme of an "elective affinity" with a period in the past..."
There is a Chinese paradox effect, a sculpture holding a sculpture, the artist's stroke of genius being the contrast between the stasis of one containing the movement of the other. A beautiful creature of stone, immoveable, upon whom dances another woman whose toy, a hoop, also happens to be a symbol of perfection and plenitude.