Louis Léon CUGNOT (1835-1894) after, Fonderie... Lot 22

Louis Léon CUGNOT (1835-1894) after, Fonderie SALIN. The Spinner of Procida - Important subject in cast iron representing a young spinner of an Italian village of Procida, dressed in a draped dress and holding in her hand a thread of wool from her skein. About 1870. H.172 x W.79 cm, Base : W. 35 x D. 35 cm (Restorations). French sculptor, Louis Léon CUGNOT is the son of the statuary Etienne Cugnot. A student of Georges Diebold (1816-1861) and Francisque Duret (1804-1865), he won the first prize in Rome in 1859, ex-aequo with Alexandre Falguière (1831-1900). He was therefore a resident at the Villa Medicis in Rome from 1860 to 1863. Cugnot received numerous official commissions to decorate the most illustrious buildings of the city of Paris: two allegories featuring the Law for the Palais de Justice, Patriotism at the Louvre, Paving and Gas at the Opera, the caryatids of the Hôtel de Ville, Saint-Luc for the church of the Trinity and Science for the Sorbonne. He also collaborated with art foundries; with the Salin foundry, he made allegorical figures for the Bayonne City Hall and resumed the Fileuse de Procida in cast iron. He received several medals, notably at the Universal Exhibition of 1867. His works are famous; his statue of Corybante stifling the cries of Jupiter as a child can be found in the Musée d'Orsay, and was exhibited until 1981 in the Tuileries Gardens.