Large 19th Century Bronze, 86 Cm, Christophe Gabriel Allegrain 1710/1795, Venus In The Bath

Epoque : XIX ème, bronze with very beautiful patina, in very good condition, Fonte à la cire perdu, en très bon état

Signed in the bronze : G.C.. ALLEGRAIN ( d'après, car notre bronze ici est d'époque XIX ème siècle )

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Subject : Venus au bain

Dimensions : height : 86 cm, width : 30 cm, depth : 27 cm. - 33 Kg

Biography:

Christophe-Gabriel Allegrain 1710 / 1795

Christophe-Gabriel Allegrain, born October 11, 1710 in Paris and died April 17, 1795 in the same city, was a French sculptor.

The grandson of landscape painter Étienne Allegrain (c. 1650-1733) and son of Gabriel Allegrain (c. 1680-1733), also a member of the Académie, Christophe-Gabriel Allegrain was the brother-in-law and collaborator of sculptor Jean-Baptiste Pigalle. He became the king's sculptor and a member of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, of which he was rector and dean.

At the very beginning of the eighteenth century, Christophe-Gabriel Allegrain moved to the Marais district of Paris, along rue du Rempart (now rue Meslay), where he set up his workshop on the site of the former ramparts of Philippe Auguste and Charles V1.

Among the artists who then had their studios on this street were the sculptor Robert Le Lorrain, as well as Jean-Baptiste Pigalle, his collaborator, whose sister Geneviève Charlotte Pigalle (1713-before 1744) he married.

Succeeding Lambert Sigisbert Adam (1700-1759), he was appointed professor of sculpture at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture on July 7, 1759, to be replaced by Louis Jean-Jacques Durameau in 1781.

Source Bénézit and Pierre Kjellberg, Dictionnaire des sculpteurs : les bronzes du xixe siècle, Éditions de l'Amateur, 1997.

Works in public collections

Paris, Musée du Louvre:

Baigneuse ou Vénus au bain (1767), Paris, Musée du Louvre.

Baigneuse ou Vénus au bain, Salon de 1767, marble statue, 174 × 62 × 67.5 cm4. In 1755, the Marquis de Marigny, director of the Bâtiments du Roi, commissioned Allegrain to create a Venus for the Château de Choisy. The terracotta sketch was presented at the Salon of 1757, but received little attention. In 1767, the large marble is completed and exhibited in the sculptor's studio.

The same year, it was presented at the Salon, and received rave reviews, notably from Denis Diderot, whose comment has remained famous: "Belle, belle, sublime figure; they even say the most beautiful, the most perfect figure that moderns have made [...] The beautiful shoulders, how beautiful they are, how chubby this back is, what a shape of arms, what precious, what miraculous truths of nature in all these parts". The work was thus unanimously appreciated despite the poor quality of the marble supplied to the sculptor, suffering from several bluish veins.

This was the first major commission placed with the sculptor, and Diderot would confess in a May 1768 letter to the sculptor Falconet: "Well this Allegrain of whom I had never heard, has just made a Venus in the bath which is admired, even by the masters of art".

Allegrain was significantly inspired by a small bronze by the Mannerist sculptor Jean de Bologne, Baigneuse posant le pied sur un vase de parfum (several known examples), echoing the sinuous line of the body, the drooping shoulders, the high, small bosom, and the hairstyle composed of sophisticated braids. The work intrigued contemporaries with its sensual pose, leaning forward with a delicate tilt of the head, which in fact necessitated leaving a bridge behind the nape of the neck to reinforce the sculpture.

The face is animated by a discreet smile and a crinkle at the left eye, soliciting the viewer's complicity. We note the naturalism of the body, the full flesh, revealing bulges and folds on the belly, hips, and the hollow of the arm, so admired by Diderot. The sculpture was acquired by Louis XV, who offered it in 1772 to his favorite Madame du Barry, who then installed it in the park of the Château de Louveciennes.

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Bronze visible at our gallery in L'Isle sur la Sorgue (France), on weekends.

Free shipping for France.

And on quotation for abroad

A1538