Louis Dejean (1872–1953) - Elegant

Circa 1900/1910

Dimensions:
Height: 22.5 cm
Width: 17 cm – Depth: 13 cm

Biography:
After spending a year as a student at the School of Decorative Arts, he workedat age 16 in a textile company, then for a craftsman where he “marble work” until his military service. He then joined the studio of Antonin Carlès (1851–1919), where he learned his craft as a sculptor while working as an assistant. He also held this position under Rodin’s studio until a disagreement over the Balzac drove them apart (1909)—this disagreement did not prevent Dejean from exhibiting alongside Rodin at the “Société Nouvelle.”

While his time in Carlès’s studio had made him a meticulous craftsman, his time with Rodin allowed him to approach volumes with greater force. He first developed a precise and decorative style in his female terracotta statuettes, inspired by the Tanagra figurines he would pause to admire during his visits to the Louvre. These works epitomize the Parisian women of the 1900s with their long coats, long skirts, and corsets (Woman with a Cane, Melancholy, Out for a Walk). He successfully exhibited them at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts beginning in 1899, a salon where he was present almost every year (he was a member of this Salon as well as the Salon des Tuileries and the Salon d’Automne).

However, he did not limit his work to these modern Tanagras. He would return to more monumental sculpture, which he created in his large studio in Neuilly. *La Maternité* (1910) signals a shift toward a broader artistic vision that rejects the picturesque in favor of the fullness of form. This trend becomes even more pronounced in his subsequent works: Boxer at Rest, Seated Woman, Narcissus, Young Wrestler,and various other figures, including the female torso exhibited at the 1926 Salon des Tuileries. Thus, from the energetic and colorful art of his early statuettes, Dejean evolved into a broad style concerned solely with sculptural creations, notably exemplified by the Saint-Ouen War Memorial (1914–1918).
In 1933, he received a commission for Peace, later renamed Welcome, a large bronze figure erected for the first-class dining room of the ocean liner Normandie. In 1937, he created for the Palais de Tokyo in Paris one of the four Reclining Nymphs that surround the pool. Here he affirmed his taste for the beauty of the human form, particularly busts and nudes . The town hall of Paris’s 5th arrondissement houses The Hammerer, and numerous museums hold works by Dejean: at the Cambrai Museum, Phrynée, a government commission from 1932; at the Nantes Museum, the Bust of Laurens; at the Sainte-Croix Museum in Poitiers, Young Girl Combing Her Hair; at the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris, Eve (marble), *Orpheus* (stone); in Roubaix, *Young Woman Kneeling* (stone).

He is also known as a member of the so-called “Bande àSchnegg,” which included, among others, former collaborators of Rodin: Bourdelle, Despiau, Wlérick, Pompon, Drivier, Dejean, Halou, Marque, Malfray, Niederhausern-Rodo, Cavaillon, Arnold, Jane Poupelet, Yvonne Serruys... Although influenced by Rodin in his early career, he moved away from the master’s lyricism toward a calm, serene, and increasingly unadorned style of sculpture, seeking simple volumes and balanced compositions.