Joseph-Charles Marin

Collection of Jean Frédéric Guillaume d'Amarzit de Sahuguet (1750 - 1817), comte Trécot d'Espagnac;

His sale, Paris, 22 May 1793, lot 188;

Galerie Patrice Bellanger, Paris, circa 1995;

Sotheby's London, 4 December 2013, lot 121;

Where acquired.

M. Quinquenet, Un élève de Clodion. Joseph-Charles Marin (1759 - 1834), Paris, 1948, p. 55.

M. Quinquenet, Un élève de Clodion. Joseph-Charles Marin (1759 - 1834), Paris, 1948, p. 55.

This superb Naiad is a testament to Marin's masterful skills as a terracotta modeller. It finds its closest comparison in the sculptor's Naiad Supporting a Shell on Her Head in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. 1975.312.5), in which the young nymph adopts a similar pose, with her arms raised above her head. Each of these terracottas exhibits the same exquisite play of surface textures, as rough reeds, rapidly modelled, brush against the figures' smooth, highly finished, body. In the present terracotta, however, Marin surpasses himself. Note the attention given to the Naiad's coiffure: the sculptor has created a tangible sense of volume through using a pointed tool to delineate individual locks of hair, through which a ribbon has been threaded and tied into a bow above her forehead. In a technique which is typical of Marin's finest works, individual strands of hair terminate in delicate incisions upon the nymph's flesh.

The Naiad's drapes, which fall in a complex pattern of folds, are directly paralleled by those of his Vestal in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (inv. M.76.12). Note the same tight layering of folds at the front, which, as the viewer moves to the reverse of the statuette, are converted into a beautiful network of almost abstract lines in varying degrees of relief. One particularly beautiful detail is where the Naiad delicately slips the fingers of her left hand between the different folds of drapes, whilst gripping another fold between the index finger and thumb of her right hand.

It is likely that the present figure is the same as that recorded as having been sold at the Trécot d'Espagnac sale of 1793 ('Une petite Naïad appuyée sur une urne. Terre cuite'; Lami, op. cit., p. 109). The 1793 statuette is listed as measuring 'haut. 11 pouces. Larg. 9 pouces,' which correlates with the measurements of the present terracotta. In ancient mythology, Naiads were freshwater nymphs and are traditionally represented beside streams, often with urns. The Metropolitan Museum of Art figure, which has a similar pose and iconography, is likewise understood to represent a Naiad; it is thought to be the statuette exhibited at the Salon in 1793 and listed as 'Une naïad portant une coquille sur la tête.'

Joseph-Charles Marin is widely regarded as the most talented of Clodion's students. He worked largely in terracotta and favoured classical Rococo subjects such as Satyrs, Bacchantes and Naiads. Marin's works, which are characterised by an interest in surface texture and a greater degree of realism than is seen in his master's oeuvre, represent the last great flowering of the Rococo, before the dawn of the Neoclassical movement. He won the Prix de Rome in 1801 and went on to become a Professor at the Académie de France in Rome in 1805. Although Marin's talents were not naturally suited to the new Empire style, he produced a number of important late works, including the marble Baigneuse of 1808 in the musée du Louvre, Paris, and his Amiral de Tourville, of which there is a marvellous terracotta sketch in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. 1987.153).

RELATED LITERATURE

S. Lami, Dictionnaire des sculpteurs de l'école française au dix-huitième siècle, Paris, 1911, pp. 108-109;

P. Bellanger, Joseph-Charles Marin 1759 - 1834, exh. cat. Galerie Patrice Bellanger, Paris, 1992;

J. D. Draper, French Terracottas, New York, 1992, pp. 44-47;

J. D. Draper and G. Scherf, Playing with Fire. European Terracotta Models, 1740-1840, exh. cat. musée du Louvre, Paris, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, New York, 2003, pp. 61-63, no. 26.