L'enlèvement d'Hippodamie, large bronze after Carrier-Belleuse and Rodin

Large bronze group with brown patina representing the abduction of Hippodamia by the centaur Pyloüs after the work by Carrier-Belleuse and Auguste Rodin.
Antique cast, late 19th/early 20th century.

This group is often mistakenly referred to as the Abduction of Déjanire by the centaur Nessus. Although similar, the two works are very different.

The episode is told in two ways, one in Homer's Odyssey and the other in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Although Hippodamia's fate differs, both stories use this scene to illustrate the evils of alcohol.

In the Odyssey :
During Pirithoos' wedding to Hippodamia, drunken centaurs led by Eurytion and Pyloüs kidnap and abuse the young bride. Pirithoos pursues them, assisted by Theseus, and after a terrible battle defeats them.

In Ovid's Metamorphoses:
The centaurs try in vain to kidnap Hippodamia, the young wife of the King of the Lapiths, a peaceful people of Thessaly.
Here, too, a war breaks out, in which Theseus also takes part. Another famous work depicts an episode: Theseus fighting the centaur Bienor by Barye.

Let's return to the abduction of Hippodamia.
This sculpture was first documented in 1871 in its terracotta version.
Auguste Rodin, who joined Carrier Belleuse's studio in 1864 as a practitioner until 1871, may have been the author.
Indeed, art historian June Ellen Hargrove has demonstrated that the centaur's body, with its boldly undulating musculature, is characteristic of Rodin's models.
Other specialists have also asserted that Carrier-Belleuse's L'enlèvement d'Hippodamie was partly modeled by Auguste Rodin.
Indeed, from 1864 to 1871, Rodin worked in Carrier-Belleuse's studio in Brussels, and this model would have been conceived at the end of his stay in Belgium. Indeed, in the contrast between the voluptuousness of the nude female body and the harshness of the centaur's features, we can distinguish the two sculptors' approaches: the romanticism of Carrier-Belleuse, and the brute force of Rodin. The anatomical treatment of the main character can be compared with the bruised men in Vase des Titans. This bronze is in the collection of the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., where it is presented with the possible participation of Auguste Rodin, Carrier-Belleuse's pupil at the time.

Bibliography:
- June Hargrove, The Life and Work of Albert Carrier-Belleuse, New York and London,1977, pp. 257-8, illustrated pl. 244
- P. Fusco and H. Janson, The Romantics to Rodin, exh. cat. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1980, pp. 164-6, no. 50
- Carrier-Belleuse, Le Maître de Rodin, exh. cat., Grand Palais de Compiègne, May 22-27, 2014, illustrated fig. 27.
- In the catalog Des Romantiques à Rodin by Fusco and Janson, published in 1980 by the Los Angeles county museum of art.

Dimensions
Height: 48 cm
Width: 43 cm
Depth: 26 cm

Very good condition, small traces of oxidation at the base.

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Ref: M183Y77NPT