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Lot Essay
With the critical acclaim met by Héraklès archer, prémière version at the Paris Salon in 1910, Emile-Antoine Bourdelle had finally attained the success and recognition that he had sought since leaving the studio of Auguste Rodin. Bourdelle had spent several years with Rodin as a carver, and whilst his early work shows the influence of the older artist in both subject and execution, from the early 1900s he sought that heroic quality notable in his monumental figures, of which Héraklès is the foremost: 'Whereas Rodin followed a romantic realist literary tradition which saw human frailty, misery and fallibility as absorbingly interesting and in some sense sacred, Bourdelle was beginning to express a contemporary yearning for a race of supermen' (D. Hall, 'Emile Antoine Bourdelle, Heroic Post-Modernist', in Bourdelle: Pioneer of the Future, exh. cat., Yorkshire Sculpture Park, 1989, p. 31).
Conceived circa 1909, the title refers to the mythological sixth labour of Hercules, in which he drives away a flock of monstrous birds that wreak havoc destroying crops near the town of Stymphalos. Bourdelle's model for the powerful figure of the demi-god was his friend, the cavalry officer, Doyen Parigot. Parigot endured the physically demanding pose for a total of nine hours before the sculpture's completion. Although the head is modelled on the earlier sculpture Tête d'Apollon, Bourdelle modified it slightly as Parigot, conscious of his career prospects, did not wish for his identity as the model to be known. The subject of the warrior was one that Bourdelle had previously explored in Rodin's studio for his first public commission in 1893, a monument to the heroes of Montauban in the Franco-Prussian war of 1871-1872. Their draperies and ancient weapons recall classical sculpture, but unlike their Greek and Roman forebears or indeed the example of Rodin, they were brutally formed to suggest the horrors of war.
In contrast with this earlier work, the warrior pose in Héraklès has less to do with this severe martiality than with the great physical strength and simultaneous illusion of ease inherent in dance. Significantly, Héraklès archer was commissioned by Gabriel Thomas, promoter of the Théâtre des Champs Elysées, who soon after also commissioned Bourdelle to execute the frieze for the decoration of the theatre in 1910.
Héraklès archer was described by a contemporary critic as 'the unbelievably audacious movement of this archer balancing himself in mid-air, supported against the ridge of a rock, that human form that even appears to leap in its immobility, that summary, precise, full and vibrant modelling is one of the most prodigious endeavours of living art. Here realism borders on idealism. A model may have sat for this anatomy but none could have given it this countenance or movement' (C. Morice, quoted in Hall, op. cit., p. 28).
Bourdelle modeled eight studies for Héraklès archer, of which the present version, Héraklès archer, huitième étude dite modèle intermédiaire définitif, is one of the most fully realized. The definitive version measures 98 inches (250 cm.) high and stands in the grounds of the Musée Bourdelle.
Conceived circa 1909, the title refers to the mythological sixth labour of Hercules, in which he drives away a flock of monstrous birds that wreak havoc destroying crops near the town of Stymphalos. Bourdelle's model for the powerful figure of the demi-god was his friend, the cavalry officer, Doyen Parigot. Parigot endured the physically demanding pose for a total of nine hours before the sculpture's completion. Although the head is modelled on the earlier sculpture Tête d'Apollon, Bourdelle modified it slightly as Parigot, conscious of his career prospects, did not wish for his identity as the model to be known. The subject of the warrior was one that Bourdelle had previously explored in Rodin's studio for his first public commission in 1893, a monument to the heroes of Montauban in the Franco-Prussian war of 1871-1872. Their draperies and ancient weapons recall classical sculpture, but unlike their Greek and Roman forebears or indeed the example of Rodin, they were brutally formed to suggest the horrors of war.
In contrast with this earlier work, the warrior pose in Héraklès has less to do with this severe martiality than with the great physical strength and simultaneous illusion of ease inherent in dance. Significantly, Héraklès archer was commissioned by Gabriel Thomas, promoter of the Théâtre des Champs Elysées, who soon after also commissioned Bourdelle to execute the frieze for the decoration of the theatre in 1910.
Héraklès archer was described by a contemporary critic as 'the unbelievably audacious movement of this archer balancing himself in mid-air, supported against the ridge of a rock, that human form that even appears to leap in its immobility, that summary, precise, full and vibrant modelling is one of the most prodigious endeavours of living art. Here realism borders on idealism. A model may have sat for this anatomy but none could have given it this countenance or movement' (C. Morice, quoted in Hall, op. cit., p. 28).
Bourdelle modeled eight studies for Héraklès archer, of which the present version, Héraklès archer, huitième étude dite modèle intermédiaire définitif, is one of the most fully realized. The definitive version measures 98 inches (250 cm.) high and stands in the grounds of the Musée Bourdelle.