Null Joseph BERNARD (1866-1931)

Dance of the roses

Bronze with brown patina.

…
Description

Joseph BERNARD (1866-1931) Dance of the roses Bronze with brown patina. Signed J. Bernard. Bears the stamp CIRE PERDUE A.A HEBRARD and the number 6. H.35 cm RELATED LITERATURE : René Jullian, Jean Bernard, Lucien Stoenesco, Pascale Grémont Gervaise, Joseph Bernard, Saint-Rémy-lès-Chevreuse, Fondation de Couvertin, 1989, model listed under n°78, p. 282; Joseph Bernard, 1866-1931, cat. exp. Lisbon, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 1992, model listed under no. 6, p. 98; Ss. dir. Alice Massé and Sylvie Carlier, Joseph Bernard (1866-1931), de Pierre et de Volupté, catalogue of the exhibition held at the Paul Dinni Museum in Villefranche-sur-Saône, 18 Oct. - 21 Feb. 2021 and at the Piscine-Musée d'Art et d'Indusrie André-Diligent in Roubaix from 20 March to 20 June 2021, published by Snoeck, Ghent, 2020, pp. 211-241. All of Joseph Bernard's style, so personal and significant, is in this primordial fact: that the artist sees the movement, that he experiences its eurhythmics and that he translates its free cadence, outside the academic canons' (Marcel Pays, article in Le radical, 20 April 1913, p. 4). This round of three naked dancers with long silhouettes testifies to the Viennese (Isère) sculptor Joseph Bernard's predilection for the theme of dance. He explored this subject intensively, of which the Dance frieze, carved directly into marble, is the masterpiece (kept in Paris, Musée d'Orsay, n°inv.RF.3514) between 1905 and 1927. He also produced a number of small figures associated in groups, working, in the period before the First World War, on the harmonious association between the plurality of gestures and the unity of the group. Here the artist has composed a group by using the same model for each of the three figures, with three consecutive movements. The attitudes of the dancers - standing on tiptoe, their backs arched, their arms forming a bridge meeting at the top and holding a bouquet of roses - are enhanced by the material chosen by the artist: bronze offers a structural suppleness that underlines the vibrancy and grace of the anatomies. Our group entitled Dance of the Roses was published by the famous publisher and foundryman Adrien-Aurélien Hébrard, who contracted with the artist in 1908 to handle the marketing of a set of small-scale sculptures. Although the plaster model seems to have been created in 1905, the first bronze was presented at the Salon d'Automne in 1912. The number of copies made by Hébrard is unknown, but the author of the 1989 catalogue raisonné stated that 'to his knowledge' there were at least five. Our copy is number 6.

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Joseph BERNARD (1866-1931) Dance of the roses Bronze with brown patina. Signed J. Bernard. Bears the stamp CIRE PERDUE A.A HEBRARD and the number 6. H.35 cm RELATED LITERATURE : René Jullian, Jean Bernard, Lucien Stoenesco, Pascale Grémont Gervaise, Joseph Bernard, Saint-Rémy-lès-Chevreuse, Fondation de Couvertin, 1989, model listed under n°78, p. 282; Joseph Bernard, 1866-1931, cat. exp. Lisbon, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 1992, model listed under no. 6, p. 98; Ss. dir. Alice Massé and Sylvie Carlier, Joseph Bernard (1866-1931), de Pierre et de Volupté, catalogue of the exhibition held at the Paul Dinni Museum in Villefranche-sur-Saône, 18 Oct. - 21 Feb. 2021 and at the Piscine-Musée d'Art et d'Indusrie André-Diligent in Roubaix from 20 March to 20 June 2021, published by Snoeck, Ghent, 2020, pp. 211-241. All of Joseph Bernard's style, so personal and significant, is in this primordial fact: that the artist sees the movement, that he experiences its eurhythmics and that he translates its free cadence, outside the academic canons' (Marcel Pays, article in Le radical, 20 April 1913, p. 4). This round of three naked dancers with long silhouettes testifies to the Viennese (Isère) sculptor Joseph Bernard's predilection for the theme of dance. He explored this subject intensively, of which the Dance frieze, carved directly into marble, is the masterpiece (kept in Paris, Musée d'Orsay, n°inv.RF.3514) between 1905 and 1927. He also produced a number of small figures associated in groups, working, in the period before the First World War, on the harmonious association between the plurality of gestures and the unity of the group. Here the artist has composed a group by using the same model for each of the three figures, with three consecutive movements. The attitudes of the dancers - standing on tiptoe, their backs arched, their arms forming a bridge meeting at the top and holding a bouquet of roses - are enhanced by the material chosen by the artist: bronze offers a structural suppleness that underlines the vibrancy and grace of the anatomies. Our group entitled Dance of the Roses was published by the famous publisher and foundryman Adrien-Aurélien Hébrard, who contracted with the artist in 1908 to handle the marketing of a set of small-scale sculptures. Although the plaster model seems to have been created in 1905, the first bronze was presented at the Salon d'Automne in 1912. The number of copies made by Hébrard is unknown, but the author of the 1989 catalogue raisonné stated that 'to his knowledge' there were at least five. Our copy is number 6.

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