Lot 38: w - JACQUES LOUIS GAUTIER FRENCH, B.1831

MEPHISTOPHELES

measurements note
89.5cm., 35¼in.

signed: J. GAUTIER

bronze, two-tone dark and mid brown patina

NOTE

Gautier modelled this extraordinary figure of Mephistopheles in the early 1850's and sent it for display at the Exposition Universelle of 1855. Its idiosyncratic design proved a success and soon after the firm of Duplan et Salles began to cast the model in bronze. Busquet, a critic for the journal L'Artiste was moved to write 'They have edited this strange Mephistopheles with a long and grimacing profile which one can see, not without some surprise, in the showrooms of the principal stores in Paris'. One customer was the Duchess of Alba, who acquired a cast for the cabinet of Napoleon III. Gautier created an equally sinister pendant of a witch, entitled Sorcière, inspired by Shakespeare's Macbeth.

RELATED LITERATURE
Romantics to Rodin p.281, no.149