Large Bronze XIX ème, Christophe Gabriel ALLEGRAIN 1710/1795, Venus in the bath

Large Bronze XIX ème, Christophe Gabriel ALLEGRAIN 1710/1795, Venus in the bath

Period: 19th century, bronze with very beautiful patina, in very good condition, lost-wax casting, in very good condition

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

Subject : Venus in the bath
Dimensions : height : 86 cm, width : 30 cm, depth : 27 cm. - Weight : 33 Kg
Biography :

Christophe-Gabriel Allegrain 1710 / 1795

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

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.

In the early 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 built by Philippe Auguste and Charles V1.

Among the artists with studios on this street were the sculptor Robert Le Lorrain, and his collaborator Jean-Baptiste Pigalle, 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, and was 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 was completed and exhibited in the sculptor's studio.

The same year, it was exhibited at the Salon, and received rave reviews, notably from Denis Diderot, whose comment remains famous: "Beautiful, beautiful, 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 unanimously acclaimed, despite the poor quality of the marble supplied to the sculptor, suffering from several bluish veins.

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

Allegrain was inspired by a small bronze by the Mannerist sculptor Jean de Bologne, Baigneuse posant le pied sur un vase de parfum (several copies are known), with its sinuous body line, sloping shoulders, high, small bosom and sophisticated braided hairstyle. The work intrigued contemporaries with its sensual pose, leaning forward with a delicate tilt of the head, which 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. The naturalism of the body is noteworthy, with full flesh revealing the bulges and folds on the belly, hips and arm pits so admired by Diderot. The sculpture was acquired by Louis XV, who presented it in 1772 to his favorite Madame du Barry, who then installed it in the grounds of the Château de Louveciennes.

Sold with invoice and certificate.

Bronze on view at our gallery in L'Isle sur la Sorgue (France), weekends.
Free shipping within France.
And on estimate for abroad

A1538

Ref: 3EKWD0WPJ7