Crowned Hawk-Eagle

Details

Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (1891-1915)
Crowned Hawk-Eagle
inscribed 'aigle faucon couronné' (lower left)
brown ink and wash
15 x 10 in. (38 x 25.4 cm.)
Executed circa 1914.

Provenance

Perry Townsend Rathbone, USA (Director of St Louis Art Museum and Director of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).
with Gillian Jason Gallery, London, where purchased by the present owner in January 2002.

Special notice

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Lot Essay

Gaudier had a keen interest in nature from a young age. He spent his school holidays fishing and wandering in the Charbonnière woods near to his home and he would have been familiar with the migratory and indigenous birds common to the area around the river Loire. He also sketched wildlife from museum displays or works of art (see E. Silber, Gaudier-Brzeska: Life and Art, London, 1996, pp. 11-13).

As demonstrated in the present work Gaudier had an extraordinary ability to convey the individual characteristics of particular species through a minimum of detail and a simplification of form.

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