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Lot Essay
Inspired by Alfred Musset’s eponymous poem 'La Nuit de Mai’ which recounts the tempestuous conversation between poet and muse, this dramatic marble figure gives three dimensional life to the bard’s effusive description of his muse emerging from a rustling field: 'J’ai cru qu’une forme voilée/Flottait là-bas sur la forêt./Elle sortait de la prairie;/Son pied rasait l’herbe fleurie;/C’est une étrange rêverie;/ Elle s’efface et disparait.’
Denys Puech was an accomplished sculpture of the late 19th century who trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and apprenticed under Jouffroy, Falguière and Chapu. He won the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1884, and exhibited regularly in the Parisian Salons through the early 20th century, amassing numerous decorations, medals and honours. His diverse oeuvre ranges from mythological figures to monuments, though his figures of muses – including a celebrated marble group in the Musée d’Orsay of a muse clutching the head of a famed Royalist poet guillotined during the Revolution, ‘La muse d’André Chénier’ (RF 810) – are perhaps his most well-known. In the present marble, Puech creates a figure at once idealized and theatrical, imbued with the expressive movement that characterized the sculpture of the Belle Epoque. A slightly larger version of the present model sold Christie’s, New York, 25 October 2005, lot 492 ($36,000). An additional group, seemingly modified from the composition of ‘La muse d’André Chénier,’ though of similar size to the present lot, sold Christie’s, New York, 26 October 2004, lot 276 ($119,500).
Denys Puech was an accomplished sculpture of the late 19th century who trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and apprenticed under Jouffroy, Falguière and Chapu. He won the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1884, and exhibited regularly in the Parisian Salons through the early 20th century, amassing numerous decorations, medals and honours. His diverse oeuvre ranges from mythological figures to monuments, though his figures of muses – including a celebrated marble group in the Musée d’Orsay of a muse clutching the head of a famed Royalist poet guillotined during the Revolution, ‘La muse d’André Chénier’ (RF 810) – are perhaps his most well-known. In the present marble, Puech creates a figure at once idealized and theatrical, imbued with the expressive movement that characterized the sculpture of the Belle Epoque. A slightly larger version of the present model sold Christie’s, New York, 25 October 2005, lot 492 ($36,000). An additional group, seemingly modified from the composition of ‘La muse d’André Chénier,’ though of similar size to the present lot, sold Christie’s, New York, 26 October 2004, lot 276 ($119,500).