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Lot Essay
Joseph-Charles Marin (1759-1834) was a pupil of Clodion, and although his career straddled the divide created by the French revolution, Marin is best known today for intimate terracotta figures of nymphs which are entirely characteristic of the ancien régime.
The present statuette is closely related to a plaster figure of Erigone by Clodion, created as part of a celebrated decorative interior in the dining room of the château de Maisons in the mid 1780s (Clodion, op. cit., no. 52, pp. 254-259). Both display near identical poses - although in mirror image - and the same swinging sense of movement created by the swathes of drapery and animal pelt. If anything, the Marin terracotta takes this sense of dynamism to an even greater extreme, with the elaborate, nervous drapery folds and the exaggerated silhouette created by the tree trunk against which the figure leans.
The theme was one which Marin re-visited on a number of occasions; there are closely related examples of terracotta nymphs by the artist both in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection and (formerly) in the de Poles collection (Radcliffe et al, op. cit., pp. 282-283). The signature on the present lot, although unusual in that it includes the 'c' for Charles, is also to be found on a plaster figure dated 1790, which was included in the Marin exhibition of 1994 (Bellanger, op. cit., no. 12, pp. 46-47).
The present statuette is closely related to a plaster figure of Erigone by Clodion, created as part of a celebrated decorative interior in the dining room of the château de Maisons in the mid 1780s (Clodion, op. cit., no. 52, pp. 254-259). Both display near identical poses - although in mirror image - and the same swinging sense of movement created by the swathes of drapery and animal pelt. If anything, the Marin terracotta takes this sense of dynamism to an even greater extreme, with the elaborate, nervous drapery folds and the exaggerated silhouette created by the tree trunk against which the figure leans.
The theme was one which Marin re-visited on a number of occasions; there are closely related examples of terracotta nymphs by the artist both in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection and (formerly) in the de Poles collection (Radcliffe et al, op. cit., pp. 282-283). The signature on the present lot, although unusual in that it includes the 'c' for Charles, is also to be found on a plaster figure dated 1790, which was included in the Marin exhibition of 1994 (Bellanger, op. cit., no. 12, pp. 46-47).