On désigne par bronze animalier une sculpture en bronze dont le sujet principal est un animal. Le premier âge d’or du bronze animalier date de la première moitié du XIXème siècle.

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Cartier, the name evokes, for each of us, luxury, jewelry, gold, precious stones and watches. More than the story of a personality, Cartier is a family in which four successive generations perpetuated and expanded the art of jewelry and watches.

 

Jewelers of the Kings and Queens

In 1847, Cartier was born with the acquisition by Louis-Francois Cartier (1819-1904) of the workshop of his master jeweler. Man of talent, he moved in 1853, place du Palais Royal and in 1859, Boulevard des Italiens.

That same year, Cartier sells jewelry to Princess Mathilde and Empress Eugenie becoming supplier of the Imperial court.

Quickly, Cartier became the supplier of major European and Asian courts and American millionaires.

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King of the auctions, Felix Ziem remains a relatively unknown artist to the public. He knew a quick notoriety and unusual fact: one of his paintings enters in the Louvre during his lifetime.

 

Our artist born in Burgundy in 1821 and studied architecture in Dijon and began a career as an architect in the Marseille region.

 

His meeting with the Duke of Orleans, eldest son of King Louis-Philippe marked a turning point in his life; in fact the latter is interested in Ziem drawings which prompted him to open a drawing school.

 

In 1840, he discovered Martigues and in 1842 he moved to Italy he visited until 1847. It is especially Venice, which influence his painting.

 

Back in France, he split his time between Paris and Fontainebleau forest where he met Theodore Rousseau and Jean-François Millet. If like his friends, he painted pastoral landscapes and scenes of everyday life, his paintings cannot be linked to the Barbizon school. It should be noted that this production has hardly the favors of buyers and collectors of the artist.

 

 

Meanwhile, he painted views of Venice and the Bosphorus in the Orientalist style but does not relate fully to this movement. His views are imaginary and based on drawings he brought back from his travels. Orientalist paintings are distinguished by the horizon placed very low as well as the importance given to the vertical lines which set him apart from its contemporaries.

 

Ziem died in 1911 leaving behind approximately 10,000 paintings, oils on canvas and oil on panel. Despite the success he met during his lifetime, he did not bind with other painters of his time and did not form student.

Stranger to the great artistic movements of the late nineteenth century, his paintings continue to be the dreamed Orient.

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Of all the major sculptors of his time, Charles Cordier (1827-1905) is certainly one whose style and art stand out the most.

 

Cordier enters in 1846 to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and in 1847 joined the studio of François Rude, one of the great masters of sculpture in the middle of the nineteenth century. His encounter with a former Sudanese slave now a model acted as a revelation for our young sculptor. In 15 days he executes his bust marking a decisive turning point for his work. We are then in the midst of the abolition of slavery and the beginnings of ethnography.

 

Charles Cordier's mission is to sculpt the diversity of human beings. To do this, he traveled to Africa and the Maghreb to capture to the best and the most realistic way possible traits of the different peoples.

 

His busts stand by the accuracy of the sculpture on which the hair is done with scissors. He developed a new technique in which he mixes materials, marble, onyx, bronze, gold and silver but also colored enamels and precious stones. Thus, his busts are characterized by polychrome allowing to make it the closest of the character of his subject.

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Zao Wou-Ki, one of the greatest French-Chinese painters of the second half of the twentieth century, died a few weeks ago at the age of 92.

 

Born in 1921 in a wealthy family in Beijing, his father is a banker; he studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Hangzhou encouraged by his family who owns paintings and ceramics dating back to the tenth century.

 

In 1948, his life changed. Zao Wou-Ki decides to leave China for France and especially Paris to rub and feed on avant-garde artists of Montparnasse. He befriends the biggest names in contemporary painting and sculpture, Pierre Soulages, Alberto Giacometti, Hans Hartung and Joan Miro to name some of the best known.

 

In 1951, Zao Wou-Ki met Paul Klee, this meeting is crucial for our artist that allows him to assert his own style in which he finds a balance between traditional Chinese painting and abstraction from the West particularly in its landscapes.

 

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At the dawn of the 20s, the production of Limoges enamels, fallen into abeyance in the late nineteenth century, is experiencing a new boom in the person of Camille Faure (1874-1956). Brilliant entrepreneur, he was able to grab spirit of the times in its active workshops from 1920 to 1980.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

His beginnings

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Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) is probably the most famous French sculptors of the second half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. His eponymous museum deals with the highlighting and protection of his work.

 

If the sculptures in marble or plaster at auction are extremely rare, it is still possible to acquire a bronze edition of one of his sculptures.

 

 

Auguste Rodin worked in his early years with the greatest sculptors of his time as Carrier-Belleuse or Joseph Van Rasbourg.

 

 

 

© SVV Aguttes

 

 

The Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900 marked the zenith of its glory. Rodin is allowed to have a private house in which he sets 170 sculptures, drawings and watercolours.

 

He formed in his workshop some of the great sculptors of the twentieth century among which may be mentioned Brancusi, François Pompon, Antoine Bourdelle or Camille Claudel.

 

© SVV Artcurial

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Jean-Baptiste Olive (1848-1936) was a French painter of the second half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth specializing in landscape and marine frequently representing his native Provence. Unknown to the general public, it is celebrated on the Cote d'Azur, and in particular in Marseilles he painted many times for his pictures full of sunshine and light.

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