JEAN-ALEXANDRE-JOSEPH FALGUIÈRE (FRENCH 1831–1900)

Falguière exhibited his life-size marble statue, measuring 202 cm. high, of La Femme au Paon at the Salon in 1890 (no. 3840) and the original plaster model was shown at the retrospective exhibition of his work held at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1902. Both the marble and the plaster are today displayed in the collection of the Musée des Augustins in Toulouse. Reductions of this size were made in bronze by the Thiebaut Frères foundry, and more rarely in marble like the present lot. The peacock with its ‘tail of a hundred eyes’ is an attribute of Juno as told in Ovid's Metamorphoses.