After James Pradier

After JAMES PRADIER (Switzerland, 1790 - France, 1852).
"The night" and "The day". ca. 1900.
Pair of patinated galvanoplastias (galvanized terra cotta). Oval marble pedestals.
With signature "Pradier".
Measurements: 68 x 18 x 22 cm (the largest).

Two nymphs or fairies of nature are the protagonists of these sculptures that allegorize the night and the day. Both women, of delicate and slender forms, stand in the center of the pedestal, with their naked bodies covered púdicamente by a cloak that falls from their stretched arms. Two little angels accompany them at their feet. The delicate floating and undulating forms of the sculptures allow us to link them to the Modernism or Art Nouveau movement, which had in nature and popular mythology, populated by fairies, elves and nymphs, two of its main sources of inspiration. It follows Pradier's models.

A native of Geneva, Pradier traveled to Paris in 1807 to work with his older brother, an engraver by profession. He won a Prix de Rome that allowed him to study in that city between 1814 and 1818 with Ingres, and in 1827 he became a member of the Académie des Beaux Arts and a professor at the École de Beaux Arts. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Pradier supervised the finishing of his sculptures. He is represented in the Louvre and Orsay Museums in Paris, the Metropolitan in New York, the Chi-Mei in Taiwan and the Courtauld Institute in London, among others. The caster, Auguste Maximilien Delafontaine, heir to a family tradition started in the second half of the 18th century by Jean Baptiste Maximilien Delafontaine, deserves special mention. Auguste Maximilien took over the reins of the family factory in 1840, thus beginning the most fruitful period for this foundry. During these years, important sculptors of the time, such as Duret, Cavlier and Pradier, collaborated with Delafontaine.