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Gilt and Patinated Bronze

Signed to the base and stamped with the Siot Foundry mark and 'D 89'.

29.00cm wide    96.00cm high    25.00cm deep (11.42 inches wide  37.80 inches high  9.84 inches deep)

G.M. Ackerman (1992), ‘La vie et l'oeuvre de Jean-Léon Gérôme’, Paris, no. S. 25, p. 319.

Ackerman p.316 no.S20; The Colour of Sculpture p.78

Catalogue de la Maison SIOT-DECAUVILLE à Paris, p.3

An Important gilt and patinated bronze sculpture by Jean Léon Gérôme (1824-1904). Cast by the Siot-Decauville Foundry, Paris.

The Bacchante à l'Amour or as it is sometimes known Bacchante à la Grappe was modelled by Gérôme in 1892. The sculpture depicts the charming subject of Cupid climbing up a thyrsus (acorn tipped staff) held by a bacchante, attempting to reach a bunch of grapes. It relates closely to the artist's 1868 painting Une Bacchante.

Cast in bronze by the Siot-Decauville foundry with an exceptional finish it was according to Ackerman (La vie et l'oeuvre de Jean-Léon Gérôme, Paris, 1992), probably edited in three sizes, the present cast being the largest.

Jean-Léon Gérôme, born in Vesoul in 1824, was a French painter and sculptor, known for his highly accomplished academic style. A student of Paul Delaroche, he attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and exhibited frequently at the Paris Salon to great acclaim and was awarded numerous medals. Regarded as one of the initiators of Neo-Greek style his works were of great influence to the Parisian art world of the nineteenth century.

Although today best known as a painter of historical and mythological subjects, he created a large number of exceptional sculptures, many of which were exhibited to great acclaim at the Great Exhibitions of the period. His first work was a large bronze statue of a gladiator holding his foot on his victim, shown to the public at the Exposition Universelle of 1878. This bronze was based on the main theme of his painting Pollice verso (1872). The same year he exhibited a marble statue at the Salon of 1878, based on his early painting Anacreon, Bacchus and Cupid (1848).

Aware of contemporary experiments of tinting marble (such as by John Gibson) he produced Dancer with Three Masks (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Caen ), combining movement with colour (exhibited in 1902). His tinted group Pygmalion and Galatea provided his inspiration of depicting himself in several paintings as the sculptor who could turn marble into flesh such as in the painting Pygmalion and Galatea (1890) (Metropolitan Museum, New York).

Among his other works are Omphale (1887), and the statue of the duc d'Aumale which stands in front of the château of Chantilly (1899). He started experimenting with mixed ingredients, using for his statues tinted marble, bronze and ivory, inlaid with precious stones and paste. His Dancer was exhibited in 1891. His lifesize statue Bellona (1892), in ivory, bronze, and gemstones, attracted great attention. at the exhibition in the Royal Academy of London, The artist then began an interesting series of Conquerors, wrought in gold, silver and gems Bonaparte entering Cairo (1897); Tamerlane (1898); and Frederick the Great (1899).

The Siot-Decauville foundry was well equipped to produce wonderfully finished, sumptuous casts of Gerome's models. It was founded around 1860 by Edmond Siot-Decauville. In 1894 Rene Mauglas, in an article on the foundry, described in evocative terms the range of patinas available from Siot such as 'le vert Barye, jeune ou vieux, suivant les transparences de marron des pleins modeles, et les notes claires, qui courent en gouttes de lumieres sur les extremites; il y a la patine fleurie, ou sont semees les taches rouges, comme des coquelicots chantant dans la blondeur des moissons roussies' and he goes on to describe a whole myriad of breath-taking colour effects of 'une surprenante harmonie'.