Agathon Léonard 'Le Vampire' Sculpture

By 1900 the Lille-born sculptor Agathon Léonard had already achieved considerable acclaim with 'Jeu de l'Echarpe' -- a highly energised and fluid figure inspired by the American dancer Louis Fuller and recalling the enchanting, diaphanous dances of Salomé. Exhibited at the 1900 Exposition Universelle, 'Jeu de l'Echarpe' enthused femininity as youthful, virginal and candid, and was an immediate commercial success, being sold out and re-issued several times during the nine months of the fair. 'Le Vampire', exhibited first as a plaster model at the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts in 1902, and then as a cast in 1903 (polychrome bronze) and 1904 (gilt bronze), offers an altogether more beguiling and provocative interpretation of femininity, and one that is deeply embedded in the fatalistic and crepiscular symbolism of fin-de-siècle society. The artistic and cultural avant garde of the twilight of the 19th century harboured a morbid fascination with the strange fruits borne from the intoxicated realms of fantasy, imagination and the Occult. The celebration of these primeval, mysterious and urgent impulses, which were manifest across so many aspects of contemporary art, literature and music, can retrospectively be considered as a reaction against a society that was increasingly mechanised, urbanised and thus considered void of soul. 'Le Vampire' brings form to the seductive irrevocability of Destiny that had recently been celebrated in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897), and most certainly offers a homage to Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923), the lead actress of the Comédie-Française in Paris, who garnered additional notoriety by sleeping in a coffin. Family anecdote suggests that Léonard may have had a relationship with Bernhardt, who, it must be recalled, was herself also a sculptress who cast herself as part-woman, part-bat in an autobiographic bronze inkwell, 1880, now in the Boston Museum of Fine Art. In all probability, however, the actual model who posed for Léonard was a certain Augustine, with the dancer Cléo de Mérode posing for the portrait. 'Le Vampire' proved popular and smaller versions were cast for retail from 1903 onwards. With the exception of the present lot, there appear to be at least two other examples of a large version of 'Le Vampire'. One example was illustrated in Maurice Rheims's pioneering reference La Sculpture au XIX Siècle, published in 1972. Another, referenced in the Silverman collection (op. cit.) and originally belonging to the Léonard family, was purchased from the Parisian dealer Jean-Claude Brugnot in 1979.