Joueur de Fluteau (Flute Player)
Date: design, 1918; cast, 1950s-early 1960s
Place made:France
Dimensions:24 3/8 × 17 1/4 in. (61.9 × 43.8 cm)
Credit Line: San Antonio Museum of Art, bequest of Gilbert M. Denman, Jr.
Object number: 2005.1.160
Signed: Signed and numbered, lower right: Renoir 5/20
Markings: Stamped with foundry mark, lower right: Valsuani cire perdu
Provenance: Dalzell Hatfield Galleries, Los Angeles, acquired by Mr. Denman January 1962
Exhibition History: 40 Years, 40 Stories: Treasures and New Discoveries from SAMA’s Collection, San Antonio Museum of Art, Oct.16, 2021-Jan. 2, 2022
Label TextGroup label with 2005.1.158 & 159:
In the last decade of his life, the renowned Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir collaborated with several young sculptors, including Richard Guino and Louis Morel, to produce sculptures based on his drawings. The clock is an allegory celebrating the continuity of life, as a nude man and woman render homage to a torch-bearing child, a symbol of future generations. The dancer and flute player were inspired by ecstatic figures Renoir had admired in ancient Roman paintings from Pompeii. Guino and Morel created plaster models for these works during Renoir’s lifetime, and they were first cast in bronze in the 1950s. (J. Powers, 2021)