Roseberys London
Lot 50
After Denys Pierre Puech, French, 1854-1942, a French marble group entitled ‘La Seine’, Dated 1902, The recumbent nymph depicted transforming into a river with reeds wrapped around her body and her hair disappearing into the flowing water, the coat of arms of the City of Paris is partially concealed in the bulrushes and the facades the city's skyline including Notre Dame and Pont Neuf carved in low relief to background, surmounted by shells, signed and dated D Puech 1902, 23.5cm high, 73cm wide, 13.5cm deep Provenance: David Hughes, London, label to underside. Footnotes: Note: Denys Puech was a late 19th century French sculptor who trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and apprenticed under artists such as Jouffroy, Falguière and Chapu. He exhibited regularly in the Parisian Salons of the early 20th century and won numerous awards and medals, including the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1884. He created 'La Seine' when he was a student at the French Academy in Rome in 1886, and it was sent back to France as part of his first envois de Rome, which was a requirement of students at the academy to show evidence of their artistic development. It was shown at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1886. This marble represents the mythological creation of the river as recounted by French author Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737-1814) in his L’Arcadie, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. The nymph Seine, daughter of Bacchus, was granted control of the bodies of water in Northern France for her role in assisting in the search of Persephone there with Ceres. After being pursued by an infatuated Neptune, she appealed to Bacchus to turn her into a flowing river to save her from her plight. The river running through Paris bears her name to this day.
