Bacchante - Charles DESPIAU (1874-1946)

Sculpture in bronze with nuanced dark brown patina
Signed at the back "C. Despiau"
Cast by Alexis RUDIER

France
Vers 1930
Height 23 cm
Width 18 cm

The plaster model of "Bacchante" was exhibited in 1909 at the Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts.
Charles Despiau produced several variants of this work, including the one presented here.
Among other known versions, there is one cast with the right leg cut off, four casts with the torso alone and eight casts with the raised leg (1929).

Bibliography :
"Charles Albert Despiau", Collections du musée municipal de Mont-de-Marsan, 1982, p.20.
"Despiau vivant, l'homme et l'œuvre", W. George, Ed. Paul Dupont, Clichy, 1947, pl.XIX.
"Charles Despiau, sculptures et dessins", Exposition au Musée Rodin, Paris, 1974, p.20.

Biography :
Charles Despiau (1874-1946) was a French sculptor. He was essentially a portrait sculptor with an archaic style spirit and simplified features. He was considered one of the greatest sculptors of the interwar period. Son and grandson of master plasterers, student at Mont-de-Marsan, Charles Despiau was noticed by his drawing teacher, Louis Henri Ismaël Morin, of whom he kept a grateful memory. He moved to Paris in 1891, provided with a scholarship from the Landes department, and entered the National School of Decorative Arts where he was taught by Hector Lemaire, then at the School of Fine Arts in the studio of the sculptor Louis-Ernest Barrias, where he learned direct carving. He started at the Salon in 1898 where he was noticed.

In 1901, Charles Despiau was admitted to the National Society of Fine Arts, of which he was named a member in 1904, the year he presented his sculpture "Little girl from the Landes". Despiau joined the “Bande à Schnegg”, a group of sculptors who had all been a practitioner of Auguste Rodin at one time or another. This group of friends was nicknamed “La bande à Rodin” by Camille Claudel. Lucien Schnegg, Gaston Schnegg's brother, was the driving force, along with Antoine Bourdelle, Robert Wlérick, Léon-Ernest Drivier, François Pompon, Louis Dejean, Alfred Jean Halou, Charles Malfray, Auguste de Niederhausern, Élisée Cavaillon, Henry Arnold, Jane Poupelet, Yvonne Serruys, etc. Their works testified to their influence on modern sculpture, against the lyricism of Rodin and, above all, the academicism in place.

In 1907, Auguste Rodin asked Despiau to work with him after seeing his sculpture "Paulette" (exhibited at the Salon of 1910). Charles Despiau then began his activity as a practitioner which lasted until 1914, the year of his mobilization. He was then forced to abandon the carving in marble of the "Genius of Eternal Rest" entrusted to him by Rodin, intended for the commemorative monument to the painter Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. Demobilized after the war and Rodin having died in 1917, Despiau refused to finish the marble of the "Genius", Rodin no longer being there to supervise it.

Despiau became a professor at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, the free academy founded by Antoine Bourdelle. In 1923, Despiau was a co-founding member of the Salon des Tuileries. He experienced his first commercial successes in 1927. The major private exhibition organized in New York at the Brummer gallery in 1927, on the initiative of the Barbazanges gallery, finally brought him fame and fortune, and made him a recognized sculptor in the United States. United, then, indirectly, in Europe.

Despiau met Arno Breker who came to work in Paris between 1926 and 1932 in Maillol's studio. Despiau always marked his friendship and his admiration for the German sculptor. In 1937, he received the order for a colossal statue six meters high, "Apollon", intended for the forecourt of the Museum of Modern Art of the city of Paris for the Universal Exhibition of 1937, where Despiau was included on the committee of selection of works, and exhibited fifty-two sculptures at the Petit Palais in a room dedicated to him. This figure of Apollo occupied Despiau so much that he never delivered it to the city. He worked on this subject until the end of his life.