Marcel Gimond
Seated Woman Styling her Hair 1926
Original plaster
H. 70, W. 26, D. 36,6 cm
Provenance
- Robert Lotiron collection
- French private collection (Robert Lotiron’s descendants)
Bibliography
- 1930 FIERENS : Paul Fierens, Marcel Gimond, Collection Sculpteurs Nouveaux, Paris, 1930, p. 35, reproduction of the stone model.
- 1932 ARTICLE : Roger Brielle, « Marcel Gimond », L’Art et les artistes, n°123, January 1932, p. 124, reproduction of the stone model.
- 1969 GIMOND : Marcel Gimond, Comment je comprends la sculpture, Arted, Éditions d’Art, Paris, 1969.
- 1994 EXHIBITION : Marcel Gimond 1894-1961, Laurence Sallenave, Bernadette Imbert’s directions, (exhibition catalogue, Aubenas, Château d’Aubenas, 5 August – 30 September 1994), Aubenas, Mairie d’Aubenas, 1994, reproduction of the bronze model.
- 2003 MPHIL : Hélène Labbé-Bazantay, Marcel Antoine Gimond (1894-1961), MPhil in Art History, under the supervision of Thierry Dufrêne, Pierre Mendès-France University, Grenoble, September 2003, sculptures catalog, p. 18, reproductions of the stone and bronze models.
- 2008 EXHIBITION : Dessins de sculpteurs II, Galerie Malaquais’s direction, (exhibition catalogue, Paris, Galerie Malaquais, 28 March – 18 April 2008), Paris, Galerie Malaquais, 2008, p. 45, reproduction of the drawing.
Other proofs
- Marcel Gimond, Hairdressing Nude, 1926, bronze, 72 cm, private collection.
- Marcel Gimond, Seated Nude, 1927, stone, 73 x 26 x 36 cm, Paris, Musée national d’art moderne – Centre Georges Pompidou, AM 808 S.
Graduated from the École des Beaux-Arts of Lyon in 1917, Marcel Gimond claims to belong to the independent sculpture movement. Sculptor of the form, he specialized in female nudes and, more specifically, portraits. The original plaster Seated Woman Styling her Hair, dated 1926, is a perfect example of the artist’s early research on the female nude. From this model was cast the same year a bronze known as Hairdressing nude[1] and now in private hands. The National Museum of Modern Art of Paris keeps a stone dated 1927, entitled Seated Nude.
Seated Woman Styling her Hair comes from the collection of the French painter and engraver Robert Lotiron (1886-1966).
Conceived like a modern-day Venus emerging from the waters, Marcel Gimond’s work depicts a woman in her private toilet. Seated on a two-step base, her bent left leg resting firmly flat on the first step and the tip of her right foot resting directly on the ground, the young woman gathers her twisted hair in a graceful movement, the right arm raised above her head, the left brought against her and resting on her leg. The movement of the arms frames the face filled with serenity thanks to its relaxed features and its eyes treated in the ‘antique style’, without indication of the pupil, allowing the gaze to project into the distance. Nothing seems to disturb the tranquility of this meditative young woman. The sculptor does not seek individualization so much as to achieve a timeless ideal, conferring an eternal dimension to his figure. The simple volumes and harmonious rounded shapes are reminiscent of the female nudes of Aristide Maillol with whom Marcel Gimond worked between 1917 and 1918 in Marly-le-Roi. The influence of Auguste Renoir is also perceptible in this sculpture. The master, who asked the young artist to make his bust[2] during winter 1919, and whose studio on Boulevard Rochechouart was also made available to him, produced numerous drawings and paintings of nude bathers in landscapes, such as Naked Woman in a Landscape[3] (1883) or the Seated Bather Wiping a Leg[4] (1914), which Marcel Gimond may well have observed.
Seated Woman Styling her Hair is part of a series of female nudes represented reclining, sitting or standing, which the artist produced in the early years of his career, between 1920 and 1930. The pattern of the drapery, positioned under the figure’s body, is recurrent and is expressed in a light, supple pleating. This sculpture can be related to a drawing executed in Indian ink in 1925 and entitled Seated Model[5] (fig. 1). Finally, the same year 1926, Marcel Gimond executed a bronze entitled Hairdressing[6] (fig. 2). The latter can be considered as the standing counterpart of our figure : the position of the upper body is the same as in Seated Woman Styling her Hair. The only difference is the position of the legs, treated here in a contrapposto which further emphas the graceful and continuous line of the bather's body, from the top of her right elbow, passing through the hollow of her armpit and her lower abdomen, to the tip of her foot.
Seated Woman Styling her Hair heralds what will constitute the originality and modernity of Marcel Gimond’s work : the research of formal synthesis, a balance in the deployment of volumes, the care of giving plastic life to his figures. In his theoretical treatise Comment je comprends la sculpture, the artist defines the goal of sculpture as "the creation of a living object, but living with a life of its own, parallel to physiological life. It is not an external indication of muscles and epidermis, but a construction possessing an internal dynamism[7]".
Fig. 1. Marcel Gimond, Seated Model, 1925, Indian ink, signed “M 25”, H. 36,5, W. 23,5 cm.
Fig. 2. Marcel Gimond, Hairdressing, 1926, bronze, dimensions unknown, location undetermined.
[1] Marcel Gimond, Hairdressing Nude, 1926, bronze, H. 72 cm, Sallenave collection. See 1994 EXHIBITION; 2003 MPHIL, sculptures catalog, p. 18.
[2] Marcel Gimond, Bust of Auguste Renoir, 1919, bronze, H. 38, W. 31, D. 26 cm, Cagnes-sur-Mer, Musée Renoir.
[3] Auguste Renoir, Naked Woman in a Landscape, 1883, oil on canvas, H. 65, W. 54 cm, Paris, musée de l’Orangerie.
[4] Auguste Renoir, Seated Bather Wiping a Leg, 1914, oil on canvas, H. 51, W. 41 cm, Paris, musée de l’Orangerie.
[5] Marcel Gimond, Seated Model, 1925, Indian ink, signed “M 25”, H. 36,5, W. 23,5 cm, reproduced in 2008 GALERIE, p. 45.
[6] Marcel Gimond, Hairdressing, 1926, bronze, dimensions unknown, location undetermined, reproduced in 2003 MPHIL, sculptures catalog, p. 18.
[7] 1969 GIMOND, p. 34.