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Antique Sculpture

Animalier

In the Paris Salon of 1831 when Antoine Louis Barye exhibited his first animal sculpture, one zealous French art critic dubbed him an Animalier: maker of animals, the species deprived of human nobility. This was intended as a criticism and not a flattering title. This perception changed in the 1830's when the new monarch, King Louis-Philippe gave several public commissions to Barye. The King's son, the Duc d'Orleans, also became Barye's patron and by the middle of the 19th Century any artist was proud to be known as an Animalier.

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Romantic

The 19th Century Grand Tour of Europe stimulated a fascination in the ancient world for those who undertook it, particularly among those who had visited on-going excavations and witnessed antiquities emerging from tombs. The European bronze foundries produced copies of classical masterpieces that were designed to remind their clients of such things, examples of the ‘old civilisations’ which, paradoxically, made them into novelties. These souvenirs answered the 19th Century craze for the antique which expressed itself in many ways.

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Art Nouveau

The Art Nouveau style of sculpture began as a French phenomenon, a demonstration of wealth looking for the latest ways to furnish homes. The Art Nouveau style was exploring themes such as nature, symbolism and the adoration of the female form. Art Nouveau sculptors broke away from the classical forms of sculpture that had been taught at the Ecole de Beaux Arts in Paris and started to create sensuous figures and busts of naked or semi-clad maidens entwined with flowers and dancing with lucid eroticism.

Art Deco

Art Deco belongs to a world of luxury and decadence, the golden age of the 1920’s and 1930’s. The very term conjures up a multitude of romantic images; huge ocean liners gliding effortlessly across moonlit seas; the sound of clinking cocktail glasses with a raucous jazz band emanating from a sumptuously decorated ballroom. Above all this era saw a new freedom that was being enjoyed during the interwar years and the geometry and clean line of the Art Deco art form served to express and visualise the enigmatic vitality of the period