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PROPERTY OF A NEW YORK PRIVATE COLLECTOR

FRENCH, (1832-1883)
LA PARQUE ET L'AMOUR

LA PARQUE ET L'AMOUR

measurements
height: 23 in.

alternate measurements
58.4 cm

inscribed Gve Doré (on the base)

terracotta

Please note that this work has been requested for loan to an exhibition titled Fantasy and Faith: The Art of Gustave Doré at the Dahesh Museum of Art, New York, from February 13 - June 10, 2007.

PROVENANCE

Sale: Sotheby's, New York, May 23, 1981, lot 291, illustrated
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

LITERATURE

Musée d'Art Moderne de Strasbourg, Strasbourg, 1983, no. 152, pp. 159, 332, another version illustrated
Annie Renonciat, La vie et l'oeuvre de Gustave Doré, Paris, 1983, n.p., another version illustrated

NOTE

In 1877, Gustave Doré submitted a sculpture to the Salon for the first time. Titled La Parque et L'Amour, the work was executed in plaster and measured over 90 inches in height. The artist made several terracotta réductions of the subject, and the present lot is one of three known examples in this size.

The Parque (or Fate in English, Moire in ancient Greek) is about to cut the thread of life, and she is temporarily restrained, scissors at the ready, by the sorrowful figure of L'Amour. He seems unlikely to succeed in his effort; his arrows are already abandoned at his feet. The Fates are most often represented as three sisters named Clotho (who spins the thread), Lachésis (who winds the thread onto its spindle), and Atropos, who cuts the thread. The sisters live in a palace where all of mankind's destinies are irrevocably engraved in bronze. Doré has managed to convincingly combine the three sisters' attributes into one unique figure.

The large plaster "was a great success and remained famous" according to an 1891 review, and Doré even considered incorporating it into a monument to the writer Alfred de Musset, but the project was never realized.