Jean-Jacques Pradier, called James (Geneva 1790 - 1852 Bougival)

Sotheby's London, 6 December 2011, lot 118;

Where acquired by Aso O. Tavitian.

This bronze statuette epitomizes Jean-Jacques Pradier's unique ability to imbue an antique prototype with contemporary aesthetics. The sculptor Auguste Préault even quipped that, "Every morning... [Pradier] sets out for Athens and arrives in the evening at the quartier Bréda [a notorious red-light district of Paris]." 

In the present model, the viewer encounters the famous Callipygian Venus of antiquity transformed into a sensual and uninhibited Parisian courtesan undressing, in a manner more appropriate to the peep show than a Greek temple.

RELATED LITERATURE

C. Lapaire, James Pradier (1790-1852) et la sculpture française de la génération romantique. Catalogue Raisonné, Milan and Lausanne 2010, no. 131, pp. 292-3;

C. Lapaire and J. Gaborit, Statues de chair. Sculptures de James Pradier, ex. cat., Musée d'art et d'histoire, Geneva 1986, no.77, p. 268;

P. Fusco and H. W. Janson, Romantics to Rodin. French Nineteenth-Century Sculpture from North American Collections, exh. cat. Los Angeles County Museum of Art in association with George Braziller Inc., Los Angeles 1980, p. 313.