Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957), La muse endormie

Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957)
La muse endormie
signed 'Brancusi' (on the back of the neck); stamped with foundry mark 'C. VALSUANI CIRE PERDUE' (on the side of the neck)
patinated bronze with gold leaf
Length: 10 ½ in. (26.7 cm.)
Original marble version carved in 1909-1910; this bronze version cast by 1913

Provenance

(probably) Alexandre Stoppelaere and Léonie Ricou, Paris.
(probably) Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles, Paris (acquired from the above, 22 March 1929 and until 1956).
Jacques Ulmann, Paris (by February 1958).
By descent from the above to the present owner.

PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE PARISIAN COLLECTION

Unlike others of the Romanian sculptor?s famous motifs, like L?Oiseau dans l?espace or La Colonne sans fin, the origin and sources of La Muse endormie are well known. It references the influence of Rodin?at whose workshop Brancusi first started carving directly into marble in spring 1907?and from whom he retained the art of the fragment?as well as the academic tradition of the sculpture portrait bust. The first ?muse? in the strict sense of the term, was the baroness Renée Frachon who posed for him from 1908 to 1910. Following a number of preliminary studies modelled in clay, a first version carved in stone (now lost) was a ?portrait? standing upright, with a stylised oval face in which the geometric nose and mouth are slightly asymmetric. The model?s features reappear in the final marble of the first Muse endormie (1909-1910, The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.), but this time in a horizontal format, a reclining head with no shoulders and just the nape of the neck?like a revival of the theme developed with Le Sommeil (1908, Muzeul National de Arta al Romaniei, Bucharest), a face barely emerging from the marble, echoing Rodin. With La Muse endormie, we see the mingling of the material?the fragment from which Le Sommeil emerged - and the face derived from reality, whose vertical posture has once again fallen asleep within the stone.
It was from the marble housed in Washington that Brancusi produced the six bronze casts currently identified, including the present work. It is taken from the original intermediate plaster, patinated with shellac and kept by the artist in his studio (after 1910, Musée national d?art moderne, Brancusi bequest the 1957, Paris). The imperfections in the casting plaster can be seen in the bronze itself, partly patinated, polished and gilded with gold leaf, a practice Brancusi used from his first casts in polished bronze, including the Danaïde series of heads from 1913. The model?s features are partially effaced?as they would increasingly be in the later versions?beginning the future transformation of a realistic portrait into a simplified object, the starkness of a pure oval stripped of any figurative reference. By losing any connection with the body, the face of the baroness moves towards the geometric although at the same time the surface itself was treated in a physical, even pictorial way, creating color variations and bronze reflections for the different areas: the forehead and cheeks left golden, the unpolished hair made darker by the grooved ?fluting?. This is what Brancusi made clear in a letter sent on 15 June 1917 to John Quinn, purchaser of Une Muse, another variant of new vertical La Muse endormie: ?For the bronze patina I purposely left some parts ungilded for contrast.?
Beneath this surface, the half-closed eyes and the half-open mouth are perceptible; the only significant relief is the fine bridge of the nose emerging from the oval and defining the sloping contours curving along the eyebrows, beneath the hairline. The left eye, barely visible, seems to hint at what is going on inside, like a forthcoming flicker of an eyelid. This could suggest an alternative presentation of the work: turning the ?sleeping? side of the face against the mount, as the sculptor advised his collector, John Quinn, in a letter dated 27 January 1919: ?When mounting these two marbles [Prométhée and La Muse endormie] it would be preferable to place [the first] on its right side and [the second] on its left side?.
Translated from the original French by Cabinet de la Hanse

PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE PARISIAN COLLECTION