ÉMILE-ANTOINE BOURDELLE (Montauban, 1861 - Vésinet,... Lot 44

ÉMILE-ANTOINE BOURDELLE (Montauban, 1861 - Vésinet, 1929). "Les amants. Pélléas et Melisande". Bronze. Signed and with anagram on the lower part. Measurements: 64 cm (height). In this sculptural piece by Bourdelle, whose title alludes to an opera by Debussy, the couple fused in a languid embrace seems to struggle to emerge from the formless matter that surrounds them, which gives the scene a great expressive power and an enigmatic sense linked to eros and creation. Émille-Antoine Bourdelle was one of the leading sculptors of the Belle Époque and had a major influence on monumental sculpture. The son of a cabinetmaker, he began to acquire practical skills in carving when he was still a child. After attending the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Toulouse, in 1884 he went on to study on a scholarship at the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, where he was a pupil of Alexandre Falguiére, Jules Dalou and Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux. His work was greatly influenced by Auguste Rodin, whom he had met in Paris, and with whom he worked as an assistant from 1893 to 1898. Later, however, he revealed himself as an independent artist. Bourdelle's originality has sometimes been overshadowed by his relationship with Rodin, but his far-reaching influence on younger sculptors, such as Alberto Giacometti, was very important. His works were inspired by Romanesque sculptors and those of archaic Greece. Among the most famous are Hercules the Archer, first exhibited in 1910; the reliefs on the façade of the Champs-Elysées theatre in 1911 and the theatre in Marseilles in 1924; the equestrian monument to General Alvear in Buenos Aires; and the Dying Centaur (1914).