Offered by Galerie Latham
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Brown patina partially gilded bronze, signed on the back, foundry mark Clementi underneath.
Famous for her sculptures, window and cinema decorations, Janine Janet (1913-2000) distinguished herself on the Parisian art scene, from the 1940s, creating textile models for Pierre Frey and jewelry for Arthus-Bertrand. , pieces of silverware for Christofle (then managed by decorator Jean-Charles Moreux)... In the post-war period, she was quickly noticed for her talents as an artist-decorator, with dreamlike and baroque taste. In particular, during the 50s to 70s, she designed settings populated with mythological figures, where motifs and materials were borrowed from nature (her childhood on Reunion Island developed in her a baroque imagination where mother-of-pearl, madrépores, shells, bark and various stones). His classical training, at the Beaux-Arts in Toulouse, then in Paris, gave him an excellent mastery of plastic techniques, those of tablet makers, bookbinders, mosaicists and rock-cutters, in the great tradition of French decorative arts of the Grand Siècle. She will thus create naiads, fauns, unicorns or sphinxes, a whole magical universe which will seduce the greatest French luxury houses, to decorate their windows. She responds to sculptural commissions (sometimes ephemeral) for Nina Ricci, Balenciaga, Givenchy, Hermès, Dior, Lanvin, Balmain, Christofle, Haviland, Roger&Gallet, among others... Janine Janet also does numerous interior decorations for the homes of large industrialists and art lovers of his time, including the patron Francine Weisweiller, Prince Ali Khan, the press magnate Robert Maxwell, the aeronautics industrialist Paul-Louis Weiller, the jeweler Pierre Arpels, the dancer Ludmilla Tcherina, the actor Jean Marais… During the 80s, she made contributions to certain creations by great Jet-Set decorators, such as Alberto Pinto or Alain Demachy. His creative record is particularly extensive and representative of a decorative period where dreaminess reigned supreme in a certain cosmopolitan and Parisian society. Janine Janet was close in particular to Christian Bérard and Jean Cocteau. She will also create for the latter, in 1959, the costumes, masks and sculptures for her film “The Testament of Orpheus”, which can be perceived in hindsight as a concentrate of the post-war zeitgeist, there were so many prestigious contributions in this film. Thanks to a bequest from the Janet couple (her husband was a painter), the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris today preserves and exhibits numerous creations by this artist (notably two magnificent sculptures, “The King” and “The Queen”, in wood studded with nails, originally made for Balenciaga windows, in 1959).
Among Janine Janet's rare known bronzes, we can cite a magnificent pair of sphinxes designed for the garden of Hubert de Givenchy's Parisian mansion (1956); an “Odalisque with joined hands” and an “Odalisque with a conch” forming a pair in gilded bronze, for Helena Rubinstein (1959); a Head of Actaeon - a lost wax bronze, therefore unique - made in 1964 for Balenciaga; a large “Venus” made for the liner Queen Elizabeth II in 1968… But his best-known bronze work undoubtedly remains the large “Reclining Deer” offered by Cristobal Balenciaga to Hubert de Givenchy in 1964, a version of which was acquired by Jean Marais, and yet another, kept since 1967 at the Museum of Hunting and Nature, coming from the collection of the Sommer couple who constituted this museum. Janine Janet was the subject of two retrospectives in this beautiful Parisian museum in the heart of the Marais: the first in 1972 (“Le jardin de Janine Janet”), the second in 2003 (“Janine Janet. Métamorphoses”). A book was published on this second occasion, published by Norma, which ensures its rediscovery and its posterity among new generations.
This gilded bronze “Sphinx” that I am offering for sale today, from a private collection, is a high quality cast iron from the Parisian founder Clémenti, based in Meudon. Janine Janet was probably inspired by the eight stone sphinxes made for the terrace of the Pavillon Royal in Marly by two French artists from the century of Louis XIV, Nicolas Coustou (1658-1733) and Jean Hardy (1653-1737). These very famous models were then reproduced on different scales during the 19th century. A set of two drawings by Janine Janet represents very comparable sphinxes for a window display of the Givenchy fashion house produced in 1956, which makes it possible to very probably date the bronze to the same date, and for the same recipient. It is difficult to know how many copies were made of this model. A paired version was reproduced in the publication of the Musée de la Chasse in 2003, on a central double page (p.70-71). Janine Janet also designed another bronze sphinx, smaller (H. 14 cm) forming a paperweight, drawn in bronze on an Aleppo marble base. We finally know of her - in the form of three felt-tip drawings and a pencil sketch, plus five photographs of plaster sculptures - a project for a "display sphinx" of which we do not know if she made the Object of a bronze print.
