Aristide Maillol Lot n° 106

Aristide Maillol Femme assise le bras replié autour de la tête (Jeune fille assise se voilant les yeux) 1905 or earlier Bronze. Height 21.7 cm, width 17 cm, depth 6 cm. Signed "ARiSTiDE MAiLLOL" on the back of the seat. This bronze cast is part of an unlimited edition issued by the art dealer Ambroise Vollard from 1905. - With golden-brown patina. We would like to thank Ursel Berger, Berlin, for kind information. Provenance Former private collection Berlin; since then in third generation family ownership Berlin Literature Cf. Waldemar George, Aristide Maillol et l'âme de la sculpture, Neuchatel 1977, p. 140 with full-page illustration; Ursel Berger, Élisabeth Lebon, Maillol (re)découvert, Galerie Malaquais, Paris 2021, no. 10 with full-page color illustration p. 91 According to Ursel Berger, there are two versions of this figure, which differ in the artist's signature. In addition to casts with the familiar Maillol monogram, some examples are signed with the name written out in full: The letters appear in capitals, but the "i" is written in lower case three times. Another example of a bronze of the "Femme assise le bras replié autour de la tête" marked in this way also bears the foundry signature "Bingen & Costenoble Fondeurs Paris". Both Maillol and his publisher Vollard commissioned this workshop between 1906 and 1908/09. The type of figure with the written signature must therefore have been created earlier than the monogrammed examples. The foundry that produced the present bronze could have been Bingen & Costenoble, but this cannot be determined with certainty. Like most of the casts in the Vollard editions, the bronze has no foundry signature.