EUGÈNE MARIOTON (France, 1854 - 1933). "Enamoured". Sculpture... Lot 14

EUGÈNE MARIOTON (France, 1854 - 1933). "Enamoured". Sculpture in patinated bronze. Signed. Size: 93 x 36 x 27 cm. Eugène Marioton's style is characterised by a notable classicism in the forms. His figures are based on the solid French neoclassical and academic tradition, as can be seen in this group made up of a couple of young lovers. Both are dressed in clothes that evoke the classical, Greek and Roman world. The young man wears a short tunic, while the maiden is dressed in a delicate tunic whose folds reveal the underlying anatomy, following the technique of the "wet drapery". The forms are slender and notably idealised, and both figures are placed on a base that evokes, with a few plant elements, an idyllic, archaic setting. A French sculptor and medallist born in Paris, Eugène Marioton was a pupil of Auguste Dumont, Gabriel-Jules Thomas and Jean-Marie Bonnassieux. He was also the brother of the sculptor Claudius Marioton and the painter Jean-Alfred Marioton. He worked in both sculpture and medallistics, and was a regular participant in the Salon de la Société des Artistes Français in Paris, where he was also a member of the jury in 1905. In the last two decades of the 19th century, Marioton was awarded a bronze medal at this exhibition in 1882, a third-class medal in 1883 and a second-class medal in 1884 (in the same year he won a second-class medal in the first Mr Willemsens competition). He was also a laureate in the class of Dumont, first prize in the competition of the Société Libre des Beaux-Arts for his marble bas-relief "Hero et Leandre", and in the same year he received a scholarship from the Conseil Général de la Seine. He took part in the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1889 with the bronze group "Les frères d'armes", a year after winning a travel grant in the Prix de Rome competition. He was also awarded the Prix Desprez in 1890, and at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1900 he was one of the artists who represented the thirty-six participating nations in the form of 2.5 m high figures with his work "Mineur belge". Works by Eugène Marioton are now in the Louvre, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen, the National Museum of Romania and other public and private collections.