A bronze sculpture “Éternelle Renaissance d´Amour”
Cast bronze with brownish green, finely shimmering patina, the base of noir belge granite. A fully sculpted group on a flat plinth. Depicting Venus standing in a dancing pose holding her extinguished torch up to light it from a flame held by the winged figure of Cupid sitting on a column. H with plinth 37 cm.
Marks of Charles-René de Saint-Marceaux, circa 1915, cast by Châtillon, Claude Valsuani.
Charles-René de Saint-Marceaux (1845 - 1915) began his training at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris at the age of eighteen, making his artistic debut in 1868. The following year he made a trip to Italy to study Renaissance sculpture. In subsequent years, he travelled to Spain and Morocco. Many of his works, which he executed in bronze, marble or terracotta, are monumental in size and can still be found in their original locations, such as the world postal monument "Autour de monde" in Bern, for which Saint-Marceaux won the commission in an international announcement for proposals in 1903.
Literature
A second, slightly differing example is housed in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Reims (inv. 922.10.8). Cf. Colboc-Olivier, La Vie et l'Œuvre de Charles-René de Paul de Saint-Marceaux statuaire (1845-1915), Paris 1973, no. 127, p. 201. Cf. Beaunier, Saint-Marceaux, Reims 1922, no. 124. For more on this artist see Kjellberg, Les Bronzes du XIXe siècle. Dictionnaire des sculpteurs, Paris 2005, p. 643 f.