Lot 382: After Antonin-Marie Moine (French, 1796-1849)

After Antonin-Marie Moine (French, 1796-1849) "Chactas", a fine bronze sculpture with reddish-brown patina, fourth quarter 19th century, the rockwork inscribed "Antonin Moine 1838", "52" and (indistinctly) "DEBR...", the backside inscribed "Thiebaut FL 32 Avenue de l'Opera Paris", "A94" and "1TF", h. 9-1/4", w. 20", d. 8". The story of Chactas is taken from the 1801 novel Atala, or the Loves of Two Savages in the Desert by Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand. Set in 18th-century Louisiana, it is the tale of Chactas, a Natchez brave, and his love, the young maiden Atala, who is half-Spanish. After long wanderings, during which Atala frees Chactas from his captors, they are taken in by Pere Aubry, a French missionary who has created a utopian Christian Indian enclave. Atala, rather than break her vow of chastity in marrying Chactas, commits suicide, and the grieved Chactas himself converts to Christianity. The irresistible appeal of "Noble Savage" exoticism, fatal passion and Christian virtue made the novel an instant success. The tragic tale also provided the inspiration for many 19th-century works of art, including "The Burial of Atala", 1813, by Anne-Louis Girodet (1767-1824), "Chactas Meditating on the Grave of Atala", 1836, by Francois-Joseph Duret (1729-1816), a series of 1863 engravings by Gustave Dore (1832-1883) and, recently re-discovered among the holdings of the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library at Tulane University, an 1854 statue by American Randolph Rogers (1825-1892). The sculptor of this bronze, Antonin-Marie Moine, was born in St. Etienne on June 30, 1796. He studied painting in Lyon before entering the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1817, where he was a student of the afore-mentioned Girodet and later - his greatest mentor - the renowned Baron Antoine-Jean Gros (1771-1835). His first showing at the Salon was in 1831, where he exhibited regularly thereafter. Among his better-known works are a bust of Queen Marie-Amelie at the Petit-Palais des Champs-Elysees, various sculptures at the Place de la Concorde fountain and the facade of the old Hotel de Ville, and his 1848 bust of Fragonard which was accepted in the Louvre in 1851. "Chactas" represents both an homage to his tutor Girodet, and one of a series of literary figures by the artist which also included Don Quixote and Esmerelda from Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris. "Chactas" was one of Moine's most popular models, perhaps made all the more so because of the artist's tragic suicide in Paris on March 18, 1849. (Said by a contemporary to be of a character "nervoux, frele, et timore", Moine was also distraught over declining commissions; his suicide was thought by some to be the ultimate homage to his mentor Baron Gros, who took his own life in the waters of the Seine.) This casting by the prestigious Thiebaut Freres foundry is a posthumous one, dating between 1880 (when the foundry opened its retail shop at 32 Avenue de l'Opera) and 1901 (when the foundry was assumed by Louis Gasne). The foundry at this time was at the height of both its artistic and commercial success; among its castings were Mercie's "Gloria Victis", Dore's "Dumas, pere" and the famous reduction of Bartholdi's "Liberty" at the Pont de Grenelle, commissioned in 1889 by Americans in Paris as a gift to France in honor of the centennial of the revolution and in gratitude for their gift of the original Statue of Liberty.