Baigneuse se coiffant (Femme les deux mains aux cheveux)

ARISTIDE MAILLOL (French, 1861-1944)

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Baigneuse se coiffant (Femme les deux mains aux cheveux)

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Patinated Bronze

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H. 38cm (15 in)

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Inscribed with monogram AM (joined) on back of plinth, no foundry mark or numbering

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Provenance:

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O'Hara Gallery, London with letter dated 10.8.72; Collection of Samuel B. Nitikman*; by descent to the present private collection.

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*Nitikman (1899-1982) was a Ukrainian-born businessman who amassed an art collection that included the work of Yves Klein (1828-1962), Ad Reinhardt (1913-1967), Ossip Zadkine (1890-1967), and others. From the late 1970s to the mid-1990s, Nitikman, and subsequently his estate, donated almost 200 works by international artists to the Winnipeg Art Gallery.

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Recent scholarship by Ursel Berger, former director of the Gerog Kolbe Museum in Berlin and expert in bronze casting, has suggested that there are countless Maillol castings without foundry marks produced in the artist's lifetime. She argues that, in fact, only the posthumous castings are known to have been consistently numbered and stamped with foundry marks. Post-humous castings were produced under supervision of Dina Vierny of the Musee Maillol.Vierny was Miallol's model and in 1944 became the executor of his estate. Since Vierny's passing her sons Oliver and Bernard Lorquin have carried on the directorship of the Musee Maillol in Paris.

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With regards to the casting 'Baigneuse se coiffant', Berger has written that the editions of this casting made during Maillol's lifetime were produced under the supervision of art dealer Ambroise Vollard. She references contracts between Maillol and Vollard that record the purchase of the original sculpture along with the right to reproduce editions. From 1909 the Vollard bronzes were produced at the Paisian foundry of Florentin Godard and most did not display foundry marks nor numbered editions. Production of the Vollard bronzes ended in the 1930s.

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See Ursel Berger, "Lifetime or Posthumous - the Maillol Case" discussed at The Afterlife of Sculptures: Posthumous Casts in Scholarship, the Market, and the Law (Catalogue Raisonné Scholars Association, May 1-2, 2018)