315 - Prosper d'ÉPINAY (1836-1914)

Prosper d'ÉPINAY (1836-1914) Marie de Rolla, known as Marion Sculpted figure in lightly speckled white marble. Signed, dated and localized: "d'Epinay, Roma, 1880". Height: 42 cm - Width: 83 cm - Depth: 25 cm (Small visible accidents to the foot and hand) Bibliography: - Patricia Roux-Foujols, Prosper d'Épinay, un sculpteur mauricien à la cour des princes, L'Amicale Ile Maurice France, 1996. Pages 100 and 101. Notice: Pauvreté! Pauvreté! You are the courtesan. It was you who pushed this child into this bed That Greece would have thrown on Diana's altar! Look, - she prayed tonight as she fell asleep... - Rolla, Alfred de Musset, 1833. Our hitherto unpublished marble, dated 1880 and located in Rome, belongs to a group of three very similar works identified by Patricia Roux-Foujols (see bibliography), all of which depict Rolla's Marie, known as Marion. These sculptures refer to the character of Marie (Marion by her courtesan name) in Alfred de Musset's poem Rolla, published in 1833. The poem recounts the tragic fate of Jacques Rolla, a bourgeois of his time, who went from vice to vice, and who, after squandering the family inheritance, spends a night with a fifteen-year-old courtesan who was forced to embrace this life to escape poverty. In an act of compassion that would reveal the nobility of her heart, Marion offered to give her her gold necklace to help Rolla out of her misery... Alfred de Musset's work concludes with Rolla's suicide, in contemplation of Marion's kind-hearted beauty. This ambiguity, between prostitution and innocence, is at the heart of Musset's text, and is particularly well reflected in Prosper d'Épinay's sculptural treatment, with its closed eyes, untied hair and soft, contemplative forms. The figure's posture seems directly inspired by the famous ancient Hermaphrodite, attributed to Polyclès. The most famous model, from the Borghese collection and now in the Louvre, was readily available to the artist. The rediscovery, in 1880, of another Roman example, now in the Museo Nazionale Romano, coincides with the period in which these works were created. This convergence is all the more significant given that our marble is located in Rome, where d'Épinay ran his workshop in via Sistina from 1864 to 1912. The group of works to which our marble can be linked thus has its creative origins in the early 1880s: - A first version in terracotta, smaller but corresponding exactly to our model, takes up all its singularities: the lion skin on which the figure rests and the small tambourine against which it slumps. Undated, it could be slightly earlier than, or contemporary with, our marble, insofar as Prosper d'Épinay usually proceeded from the terracotta model to the marble execution. It was sold at Hôtel Drouot on April 7 and 8, 1893 (lot 38), then reappeared at Sotheby's on November 23, 2010 (lot 81, sold for 46,850 GBP). - A plaster model is also reported: kept in the artist's studio until 1912, then in the Duke of Gallese's collection, it was sold to an antique dealer in 1991 and remains unlocated today. - Finally, a marble version was exhibited at the 1884 Salon under number 3491, and subsequently sold at Christie's in New York on February 11, 1997 (lot 57, sold for 134,500 USD). This marble, however, differs slightly from our example: the most suggestive accessories have been removed in favor of a more classical décor. A real bed and a braided mat replace the lion skin and sensual hair. The figure is no longer abandoned on an allusive support, but installed in a domesticated, wiser space, attenuating both the sensual charge and ambiguity of the earlier versions. The marble presented here thus appears to be one of the earliest known versions of the Marion de Rolla theme. Its conception clearly distinguishes it from later versions, in which the device is recomposed in a setting more in keeping with Salon expectations. It retains its original boldness in the treatment of the body and its staging, while the use of marble consecrates the sensual figure in a form of completion unprecedented to date.