François POMPON (1855-1933) - Lot 62

François POMPON (1855-1933) White bear, version E (right hind leg cut off by front) Brown patina bronze Cast ca. 1925/1926 Signed "POMPON" on the back of the left hind paw Signed "POMPON" and numbered "9"; incised on the underside of its left front leg Height 24 cm; Length: 11 cm; Depth: 45 cm Provenance : - Joseph Laforge Collection (1887-1980), founder of Galerie Saint Louis in Grenoble ; - Then by descent. Examples of the bronze 'E' version in public collections: - François Pompon, Ours blanc, 1927, bronze, signed on the back of his left anterior "Pompon"; stamped on the back of his left anterior: "CIRE/C.VALSUANI/PERDUE", dim. 24 x 11.5 x 45 cm, Paris, Musée d'Orsay, inv. no. RF 4196 ; - François Pompon, Ours blanc, bronze, inscription on right hind paw "Pompon"; under left hind paw "CIRE/C.VALSUANI/PERDUE", below, in pencil, "12", dim. 24 x 10.5 x 43.5 cm, Dijon, Musée de Beaux-Arts, no. inv. 3453. Related literature - François Pompon, Vingt-sept reproductions de sculptures précédées d'une étude critique par E. de COURIERES, Les sculpteurs français, collection publiée sous la direction de Roger ALLARD, Gallimard, 1926, ill. p. 49 ; - Bruno DARDELET, " Jongkind en Dauphiné : aquarelles du Musée de Grenoble : hommage à M. Joseph Laforge, conservateur honoraire du musée dauphinois " in L'art et La Lettre, pochette n° 2, série Hommes du Dauphiné. - Grenoble , 1969. - B&W - Cat. no. [3], reprod. in b&w; - Catherine CHEVILLOT, Liliane COLAS, Anne PINGEOT, François Pompon: 1855-1933, cat. Exp. Paris, Musée d'Orsay, October 18, 1994 to January 22, 1995, Paris, Gallimard ; Electa ; Réunion des musées nationaux, 1994, N° 122 E, p. 212 ; - Roger CHABOUD, " De la Galerie Saint-Louis aux musées : la collection Joseph Laforge ", in Les chroniques : revue d'histoire en dauphiné / Association rivoise de défense de l'environnement et du patrimoine, n° 51, juin 2011, p. 4-6 ; - Élisabeth LEBON, Dictionnaire des fondeurs de bronze d'art - France 1890-1950, Marjon Éditions, 2003, pp. 259-261. Our exceptional bronze example of l'Ours blanc corresponds to version 'E' of the catalog raisonné drawn up in 1994, the so-called "right hind leg cut by the front". As the sculptor's account books at the Musée d'Orsay seem to indicate (Anne Pingeot, "Archive d'un sculpteur, les livres de comptes", in François Pompon: 1855-1933, 1994 exhibition catalog, pp. 115-136), the work may have been part of the commission of November 24, 1924, placed directly with François Pompon by the Grenoble gallery owner and collector Joseph Laforge. However, as these account books are not sufficiently detailed, we can also consider a personal commission from Joseph Laforge. Our bronze, signed "Pompon" on the back of the left hind leg, is again signed and numbered "9" by the artist through an incision in the metal under the left foreleg. This autograph numbering corresponds to the contract signed between Pompon and Laforge in 1924, limiting the number of bronze copies of the polar bear to twenty. Like François Pompon's very first bronzes, cast by Hébrard and Claude Valsuani and exhibited by the sculptor at the Salons d'Automne, des Artistes français et des Décorateurs in 1922, our print bears no founder's stamp. However, given the concomitance, in 1924, between the contract signed between Laforge and Pompon on the one hand, and Pompon's orders to the Claude Valsuani foundry on the other, there is every reason to believe that our print was cast in the rue des Plantes foundry in Paris by Marcel Valsuani, who took over the business after his father's death in 1923. Pompon then recovered the print, which he chiselled, retouched and engraved with the number "9", accompanied by a new signature. This copy is unprecedented on the market. It has been preserved to this day by Joseph Laforge's descendants. ...There is not a single print that has not been executed, engraved or retouched by the artist's own hands. (René Demeurisse, 1948, on the subject of editions made during the artist's lifetime: quoted in the 1994 exhibition catalog, p. 102) François Pompon, a sculptor from Burgundy, spent most of his career working in the shadows, but with great talent, for artists who became the great names of modern sculpture. While he worked with Alexandre Falguière and Camille Claudel, was Auguste Rodin's studio head, and collaborated with and became a friend of René de Saint Marceaux, Pompon enjoyed creating highly original animal subjects as early as the 1880s, and more intensely from 1902 onwards.