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Lot Essay
Aristide Maillol turned to sculpture in the 1890s, only when his failing eyesight forced him to give up his tapestry work. He experimented first with wood carvings and then began modeling statuettes in clay. Around the turn of the century Ambroise Vollard bought a number of these terracotta statuettes and had them cast in bronze. In 1902, he exhibited several of Maillol's tapestries and approximately thirty of his statuettes in his gallery on rue Lafitte.
La nuit is characteristic of Maillol's early work; its simple, smooth contours suggest a form of idealized beauty. There is no unneccessary detail, no complicated gestures. Maillol modeled his female figures in calm, noble forms. As John Rewald has commented:
To celebrate the human body, particularly the feminine body, seems to have been Maillol's only aim. He did this in a style from which all grandiloquence is absent, a style almost earthbound and grave. The absence of movement, however, is compensated by a tenderness and charm distinctively his own; and while all agitation is foreign to his art, there is in his work, especially in his small statuettes, such quiet grace and such warm feeling that they never appear inanimate. He has achieved a peculiar balance between a firmness of forms which appear eternal and a sensitivity of expression--even sensuousness--which seems forever quivering and alive (J. Rewald, Maillol, New York, 1958, pp. 6-7).
La nuit is characteristic of Maillol's early work; its simple, smooth contours suggest a form of idealized beauty. There is no unneccessary detail, no complicated gestures. Maillol modeled his female figures in calm, noble forms. As John Rewald has commented:
To celebrate the human body, particularly the feminine body, seems to have been Maillol's only aim. He did this in a style from which all grandiloquence is absent, a style almost earthbound and grave. The absence of movement, however, is compensated by a tenderness and charm distinctively his own; and while all agitation is foreign to his art, there is in his work, especially in his small statuettes, such quiet grace and such warm feeling that they never appear inanimate. He has achieved a peculiar balance between a firmness of forms which appear eternal and a sensitivity of expression--even sensuousness--which seems forever quivering and alive (J. Rewald, Maillol, New York, 1958, pp. 6-7).