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Lot Essay
Olivier Lorquin has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
Conceived in 1911, Le Printemps was created for one of the most important and influential commissions of Aristide Maillol’s entire career, a sculptural project to grace the Moscow home of Ivan Morozov. One of the most powerful collectors active in the art market during the early years of the twentieth century, Morozov had made his fortune in the textiles business and was a passionate champion of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painting, visiting Paris annually to view the latest developments in the art world and purchase works for his collection. He had been impressed by Maillol’s sculpture Pomona at the 1910 Salon, and requested a group of four figures from the sculptor to stand in the music room of his newly refurbished villa. The project called for a representation of the four seasons, which would complement the suite of paintings Morozov had recently commissioned for the room from Maurice Denis, entitled L’histoire de Psyche, painted in 1908. For the duration of the project the two artists, who knew each other from their time with the Nabis, appear to have worked in parallel on their respective comissions, visiting and consulting one another as they developed their ideas.
The resulting quartet of sculptures are filled with an elegance and serenity characteristic of Maillol’s timeless artistic vision. Intriguingly, each work focuses on concepts of abundance and fecundity, rather than representing the full cycle of the four seasons. L’Été, for example, is characterised by her sensuous, fleshy curves, the fullness of her form embodying the plenitude of summer at its height, while the shapely figure of Flora, the Roman goddess of vernal blossoming, signifies the richness of life and renewal in the heady springtime bloom. In comparison, the body of Le Printemps appears distinctly youthful and less voluptuous than the other figures in the Morozov sequence. Embodying the season in its early, unfolding stage, she lifts a garland of flowers to her chest, a promise of the abundance to come. While Maillol occasionally used models to supplement his drawing studies of the female body, each of the Morozov sculptures are a synthesis of a variety of sources, which he then used to create an ideal, imagined form that could embody the concept, atmosphere and meaning of the season. Explaining this process, Maillol stated: ‘I don’t want to make the real. I want to make the true’ (Maillol, quoted in D. Vierny, ‘Maillol and Modernity,’ trans. R. Pincus-Witten, Aristide Maillol: Sculpture, exh. cat., New York, 1997, n.p.).
Conceived in 1911, Le Printemps was created for one of the most important and influential commissions of Aristide Maillol’s entire career, a sculptural project to grace the Moscow home of Ivan Morozov. One of the most powerful collectors active in the art market during the early years of the twentieth century, Morozov had made his fortune in the textiles business and was a passionate champion of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painting, visiting Paris annually to view the latest developments in the art world and purchase works for his collection. He had been impressed by Maillol’s sculpture Pomona at the 1910 Salon, and requested a group of four figures from the sculptor to stand in the music room of his newly refurbished villa. The project called for a representation of the four seasons, which would complement the suite of paintings Morozov had recently commissioned for the room from Maurice Denis, entitled L’histoire de Psyche, painted in 1908. For the duration of the project the two artists, who knew each other from their time with the Nabis, appear to have worked in parallel on their respective comissions, visiting and consulting one another as they developed their ideas.
The resulting quartet of sculptures are filled with an elegance and serenity characteristic of Maillol’s timeless artistic vision. Intriguingly, each work focuses on concepts of abundance and fecundity, rather than representing the full cycle of the four seasons. L’Été, for example, is characterised by her sensuous, fleshy curves, the fullness of her form embodying the plenitude of summer at its height, while the shapely figure of Flora, the Roman goddess of vernal blossoming, signifies the richness of life and renewal in the heady springtime bloom. In comparison, the body of Le Printemps appears distinctly youthful and less voluptuous than the other figures in the Morozov sequence. Embodying the season in its early, unfolding stage, she lifts a garland of flowers to her chest, a promise of the abundance to come. While Maillol occasionally used models to supplement his drawing studies of the female body, each of the Morozov sculptures are a synthesis of a variety of sources, which he then used to create an ideal, imagined form that could embody the concept, atmosphere and meaning of the season. Explaining this process, Maillol stated: ‘I don’t want to make the real. I want to make the true’ (Maillol, quoted in D. Vierny, ‘Maillol and Modernity,’ trans. R. Pincus-Witten, Aristide Maillol: Sculpture, exh. cat., New York, 1997, n.p.).