Lot n° 136
Estimation :
20000 - 30000
EUR
Result without fees
Result
: 22 000EUR
René BUTHAUD (1886-1986)
"Amphitrite and... - Lot 136 - Briscadieu
René BUTHAUD (1886-1986)
"Amphitrite and Poseidon" unique piece, c. 1935
Important decorative mural composition made of 9 rectangular glass panels. Each glass plate with decoration, on the reverse, said to be fixed under glass and realized with paint (brown for the tracings), gold, silver and palladium.
Signed R. BUTHAUD, on the panel at the bottom right.
232 x 151 cm.
(2 tiles 74 x 63 cm, 1 tile 84 x 63 cm, 4 tiles 74 x 44 cm, 2 tiles 84 x 44 cm).
(Important missing, oxidations and detachments to the parts in fixed under glass).
Provenance :
- Work made especially for Mr. X. in Bordeaux in the mid-1930s.
- Work remained in the descent of the previous (initial sponsor).
René Buthaud, the Fixed under glass, the Mythology.
Celebrated as one of the great renovators of 20th century ceramic art, René Buthaud (1886-1986) was above all a complete artist who put his great artistic mastery at the service of his work in clay, but also knew how to use other mediums brilliantly. Originally trained in painting, drawing and intaglio engraving, Buthaud became both a ceramist-painter and ceramist-sculptor, using the volumes offered by the material to render the movement of the figures in his rich decors.
He mainly realized stannier earthenware with mythological, allegorical or orientalist decorations, mostly decorated with his characteristic feminine figures.
A true multidisciplinary artist, Buthaud did not, however, confine himself to ceramic art and, in parallel with his activities related to the arts of fire, exploited other media to affirm his virtuosity.
In the 1930s, wishing to express himself on larger surfaces than those of his vases, he tried the technique of the fixed under glass, inherited from his discovery of an engraving of Napoleon carried out according to the old process of the "eglomerated glass".
This decorative technique, also used by his friend Jean Dupas on the liner Normandie, consisted in transferring a charcoal drawing on a glass plate; the decoration was then traced on the reverse side with brown paint, before the precious metals (gold, silver), palladium or aluminum were applied. The first tests on single glasses of small formats preceded the large panels, composed of plates assembled in a checkerboard pattern, which he produced from 1933 onwards in response to orders. In total, he created about twenty unique glasses, as well as about twenty large compositions in tiles, which he rarely exhibited, only in Bordeaux - which is why their provenance is often established from Bordeaux collections.
This new medium allowed Buthaud to create large-scale decorations, which addressed themes dear to him, already treated in ceramics. Thus, he created fixed under glass decorations of plants, seascapes, mythological subjects and allegorical female figures, often close to the models of the Italian Renaissance. Among these fixtures are representations of the Abduction of Europa, or Women with a garland of flowers, evoking the figure of Spring by Botticelli.
Depicting a scene from marine mythology, the panel presented here is perfectly in line with the themes exploited by Buthaud. Against a seascape background of sinuous waves, a nereid with a halo of floating draperies is depicted standing on the back of a male figure that is part man, part horse and part triton, personifying the god Poseidon - all the more so since the god of the seas and oceans is depicted with a trident in his hand and is accompanied by two dolphins. The nereid, wearing a crown of shells, is undeniably reminiscent of Botticelli's Venus, and, because of her proximity to the god in the composition, most probably embodies Amphitrite, Poseidon's wife.
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