Beschreibung:

Jean-Jacques Feuchère1807 - 1852Satan bronze, dark brown patinasigned and dated FEUCHERE 1834H. 80 cm; 31½ in.____________________________________________Jean-Jacques Feuchère1807 - 1852Satan bronze à patine brun foncésigné et daté FEUCHERE 1834H. 80 cm ; 31½ in.Condition reportFor further information on the condition of this lot please contact ulrike.goetz@sothebys.com ProvenanceEuropean private collection since the 1970s____________________________________________Collection privée européenne, depuis les années 1970LiteratureRelated Literature / Références bibliographiques A. Decamps, ‘Révue du Salon de 1834’, Le Musée 1834, p. 74.J. Janin, Notice sur J. Feuchère, Paris 1853.Catalogue du cabinet du feu de M. Feuchère, statuaire. Objets d’Art et de curiosité de M Feuchère, Paris, mars 8-10, 1853.S. Lami, Dictionnaire des Sculpteurs de l’Ecole Française au Dix-Neuvième siècle, Paris, 1916 (réed. 1970), p. 364-369.M. Beaulieu, ‘Deux bronzes romantiques d’inspiration classique’, La Révue du Louvre et des musées de France, 1975, XXV, no 4, pp. 269-274.P. Fusco, H.W. Janson, The Romantics to Rodin. French Nineteenth-Century Sculpture from North Americain collections, exh. cat. Los Angeles County Museum, 1980, pp. 266-267.Le Cortège des Passions, Sculptures du XIXe et XXe siècles,Galerie Univers du Bronze, Paris, 1984, p. 24-25.L'Invention du Sentiment aux sources du Romantisme, exh. cat., Paris, musée de la Musique, 2002.W. Joseph, 'Images de Satan entre ange déchu et créature fantastique', in Visages de l'effroi. Violence et fantastique de David à Delacroix, exh. cat. Musée de la Vie Romantique, Paris, 2016, pp.184 -193.Catalogue noteSatan by Jean-Jacques Feuchère is an iconic work of French Romanticism at its height. The bronze features on the front cover of the catalogue of one of the great landmark exhibitions of nineteenth century sculpture, ‘The Romantics to Rodin’, as a pendant to Rodin’s Thinker on the back cover: Feuchère’s bronze occupies an important place in Romantic sculpture, and this highlights his influence on Rodin’s œuvre. Jean-Jacques Feuchère epitomised Romanticism. Son of the bronze maker and finisher Jacques-François Feuchère, and trained by the sculptors Cortot and Ramey, Jean-Jacques earned his living as a craftsman, especially a goldsmith and bronze finisher, before experimenting with other techniques such as enamelling, metalwork and bronze casting. These he applied to the decorative arts, while taking his inspiration from Renaissance models. The piece was initially intended as a mantelpiece decoration, with Satan at the centre flanked by two vases in the shape of bats. Feuchère showed the plaster model at the 1834 Salon (no. 2243), and the small bronze version at the Salon the following year (no. 2037). The small model (the example now in the Musée de Douai) also appeared in the exhibition ‘Centenaire de l’Art Français’ in 1900. In his account of the 1834 Salon, which was illustrated with a drawing of Feuchère’s Satan, the painter and art critic Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps applauded the work (cf. Le Musée, 1934): ‘among all the angels and demons, there is one figure that incontestably merits particular attention because of the original character it has been imprinted with, because of the novelty of its composition and the conscientious craftsmanship with which it is rendered, it is the Satan of M. Feuchère, a personification, with plenty of verve and ardour, of the evil genius at odds with being powerless.’ Satanic subjects were very popular with the Romantic artists of the 1830s, who found their sources in works of literature such as Dante’s Inferno (1303-1321), Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667) and Goethe’s Faust (1808). These provided inspiration for works by the artists of the period, such as Delacroix’s Mephistopheles (1827) and the sculptures of Jean-Jacques Flatters (1827), Marochetti (1831) and Duseigneur (1831). Emotions, imagination and the power of nature were at the heart of the Romantic movement. F