French

French Art Deco “Heptagon” clip / brooch set with a large fancy cut madeira citrine and 8 baguette madeira citrines all set in 18K gold, signed GA in a diamond French touch mark, French Eagle’s head mark for 18k gold, c. 1935

CHARLES GREBER  France

“Chameleons” vase   c. 1905

Stoneware with crystalline-structure glaze in creamy white beige and blue tones with floral motifs and three full scale chameleons perched on the edge.

Marks: C. Greber (incised script)

H: 6 1/4″ x Dia: 7 1/2″

The potter-sculptor has awakened Darwin’s theory of evolution with this vase and has furthermore humanized these reptiles with an amusing sense of cameraderie.

ANDREE FLAMANT-DUCANY-GIDE (1882-1970) France
VALSUANI FONDEUR (1899-1981) Paris, France

Cubist mask sculpture  20th Century

Cast bronze with rich brown-black patina (possibly cast at a later date by the Valsuani Foundry)

Marks: G. Flamant, 2/8 C. Valsuani Cire Perdue (signed on chin)

H: 11” x W: 7” x D: 5 ½”;
On stand: H: 18 ½”

Price: $35,000

ANDREE FLAMANT-DUCANY-GIDE
Flamant-Gide was born in Nimes, France on January 2nd, 1892 and died on March 28th 1970.  She was both a painter and sculptor and exhibited regularly at the Salon des Artists Francais beginning in 1923. She sculpted in an angular Cubist style influenced by African Art and was a fellow artist of Joseph Csaky, Gustave Miklos, Jacques Lipchitz and Henri Laurens who were considered the leading Art Deco sculptors in Paris during the 1920’s.

CUBISM

Cubism drew its influence from: Cezanne’s structural analysis in his oil landscapes, e.g. ‘La Montagne Sainte Victorie’ c.1887; Gauguin’s figurative landscapes, e.g. ‘Haymaking’ 1889; and African tribal Art such as Gabon masks. European artists were greatly influenced by African and Oceanic Art during the late 1890s and early 1900s. African sculpture, with its bold shapes and lines, had a great impact on the development of Cubism. Maurice de Vlaminck became a keen admirer and collector of African masks after seeing them in a Paris anthropological museum. He purchased similar masks and his excitement for these works displaying bold primitive expressions and simplistic design filtered through to Matisse, Derain, Gris and Picasso, who all became collectors as well. By the 1920s African art exhibitions were common in Paris and other cities throughout Europe.
Cubist sculpture brought the simplified shapes of Cubist painting together with the three-dimensional modeling medium of sculpture. The first Cubist sculpture, which could be properly deemed as such was made by Picasso in 1909 and was titled ‘Head of a Woman’. However Picasso did experiment with sculptural forms as early as 1907 when he found himself fascinated and deeply influenced by African masks. Cubist sculpture was mostly reminiscent of Analytical Cubism in its stripping away of illusionist details to reveal the fundamental form contained in each individual subject, be it human or still-life.

VALSUANI FOUNDRY
The Valsuani foundry was started by the brothers Claude and Attilio Valsuani who learned the foundry trade while employed at the Hebrard foundry.  While working for Hebrard, Claude Valsuani showed great promise as a finisher and eventually worked his way up to become the Technical Director of the Hebrard foundry. In 1899 Claude Valsuani started his own foundry in Chatillon, casting mostly small works for various artists primarily using the lost wax technique of casting (cire perdue). In 1905 he moved his foundry to 74 Rue des Plantes in Paris. Among the famous sculptors who had the Valsuani foundry cast their works were: Renoir, Picasso, Despiau, Paul Troubetzkoy, Matisse, and Gaugin. Claude Valsuani died in 1923 in his native Italy but his son, Marcele then took over the foundry and continued the tradition of producing extremely fine bronzes until the 1970’s.

ROBERT BLOCH France

BOURDOIS & BLOCH Paris, France

“Ribbon” bowl c. 1939

Porcelain with gilt and matte black polychrome decoration

Marks: crossed swords (company logo) MADE IN FRANCE

Paper label: Exposition de New York 1939   Robert Bloch Porcelaine de Paris

H: 2 3/4” x D: 9 3/4”

ANDRÉ THURET  (1898-1965)  France

“Organic” vase/bowl  c. 1930

Handblown and formed clear glass with bubble technique encapsulating a frosty white oxide.

Signed: ANDRÉ THURET

H: 2 3/8″ x D: 4″ x W: 6 1/4″

Andre Thuret was one of the first modern French studio glass artists and a contemporary of Maurice Marinot. He was born on November 3, 1898 in Paris. It is by science that Andre Thuret came to art. It is in Thuret the engineer and the chemist who serve Thuret the vase artist.  The scientist places at the disposal of the creator of forms, rates/rhythms and colors the fluid and transparent beauty of glass and the reactions of metallic oxides. He worked in a traditional glass blowing technique at a temperature often exceeding 1,000 degrees. Thuret exhibited at the Salon d’Automne in 1928 and 1932 and obtained his first plate of the Company of Encouragement to Art. He was invited to exhibit in the United States in 1929-1930. Andre Thuret received his Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1947.

MLLE GENEVIÈVE RAULT (décor  1907)  France
MANUFACTURE NATIONALE DE SÈVRES  France

Andromeda branches grand vase   1907

Glazed porcelain with pâte-sur-pâte applications. The multicolored “Andromeda” foliage and branches in shades of pink, salmon, green and taupe on a cream background.

Marks: underglaze green S and 1907 (in triangular cipher), MANUFACTURE RF NATIONALE surrounding DÉCORÉ A SÈVRES 1907, underglaze blue GR (conjoined monogram).

H: 16″ x Dia: 7 1/2″

This example from the Sèvres Manufacture is a tour-de-force of early 20th century porcelain. The graphic Art Nouveau design of the pastel foliage and white blossoms of the Andromeda vase is brought to life thanks to the fine detailing of every individual blossom made with hand-applied pâte-sur-pâte or paste porcelain.

EDMOND LACHENAL (1855-1930) Paris, France

Green glazed pitcher / vase form c. 1900

Marks: E LACHENAL (impressed and glazed in a rectangle on base)

For information on Edmond Lachenal see:”Edmond Lachenal”, Fritz Minkus, Kunst und Kunsthandwerk, IV (1901) pp.390-98; La Céramique Art Nouveau, Edgar Pelichet and Michèle Duperrex (Lausanne: Les Éditions du Grand-Pont, Switzerland, 1976) pp. 66,71,74,78,83,112,115; “l’Atelier Lachenal à la galerie Georges Petit “ in Les Echoes d’Art” (1933), p. Vll; Art Nouveau: Belgium & France, exh. cat. Yvonne Brunhammer et al. (Houston, TX: Institute for the the Arts, Rice University, 1976), p. 48; Le Japonisme (Paris: Éditions de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1988) cat no. 377, p. 321; Japonisme: the Japanese influence on western art in the 19th and 20th Centuries, Siegfried Wichmann (Parklane: New York, 1980) pp. 339, 349; cat. no. 920.

H: 9″ x W: 6 3/4″