Yvonne, Breton From Pont Aven Ruth Milles

Very nice old edition bronze by Ruth Milles Swedish artist. Titled "Yvonne" and signed Ruth Milles. This small bronze, made at the very beginning of the 20th century, reveals the sulky and certainly a little fierce character of this young "Yvonne", Breton from Pont-Aven. This sculpture, born under the fingers of Ruth Milles, also testifies to all the affection that this artist, from Sweden, had for the land of Brittany and its inhabitants. biography of Ruth Milles: Daughter of Lieutenant Emil Mille Andersson and Walborg Tisell, she is the sister of Carl Mille and the half-sister of the architect Evert Milles (1885-1960). Unlike her brother Carl, she studied at the Technical School in Stockholm between 1892 and 1893, then at the Royal Academy of Art from 1894 to 1898. From 1897 to 1904, Carl studied sculpture in Paris, where he was l pupil of Auguste Rodin The following year, Ruth joined her brother in Paris. Together they founded a company in Paris and sold their production made of representations of various characters from fairy tales, of which she is the author, and of children in the form of small bronze sculptures. She also practices ceramics. They spend their summer holidays in Brittany at Saint-Briac, where Ruth Milles depicts the lives of seafarers in her literature and sculpture. In 1902, she received a special prize at the Salon des Artistes Français. There were few women practicing the profession of sculptor at that time, and necessarily her name is still attached to that of her brother Carl, but her sculptures all had their own identity. The work of Ruth Milles, always of very good quality, offers us portraits and standing figures of Breton women in volume, most often in bronze, "Yvonne" is a known and always endearing example, we can also mention " Suzanne” and the “Breton woman holding her bonnet in the gust of wind.” She was stricken with tuberculosis in 1903. She traveled to Sweden, settled in Islinge sur Lidingö and opened a studio there which she shared with her brother Carl. She obtained numerous commissions from cultural institutions in Stockholm. Sick, she had to resign herself to giving up sculpture and devoted herself to poetry. In 1932, she moved to Rome, . She died in Rome and is buried in the city's Protestant cemetery.