FRANCOIS-RAOUL LARCHE (1860-1912) ART NOUVEAU GILT- BRONZE «DANSEUSE LOIE FULLER A DEUX LUMIERES» LAMP SIOT - DECAUVILLE, circa 1900

Lotto 623
18 00020 000
Signed, bearing the foundry seal, numbered 1782 Gilt-bronze table lamp H: 47.5 cm, L: 23.5 cm Provenance: Private collection, Monaco Raoul Larche’s bronze table lamps, modelled after Loie Fuller’s famous Serpentine Dance, are a stylistic masterpiece of Art Nouveau aesthetics. The Art Nouveau dancer and choreographer Loie Fuller (1862-1928) conquered the famous Parisian cabaret Folies-Bergère on her opening night on November 5, 1892, by transforming her dances into syntheses of movement, colour and music. The electric lighting, together with the complex set of mirrors she used on stage, illuminated her immense swirling skirt and evoked the fluid and organic forms of Art Nouveau. Artists and writers of her time praised her talent; her art was received with much acclaim as an aesthetic revolution. The famous dancer was the favourite subject of the brilliant sculptor Raoul Larche and a muse for other Art Nouveau artists such as François-Rupert Carabin, Jules Chéret, Alphonse Mucha, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Théodore Rivière and Pierre Roche. Loie Fuller had her theatre at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris; the architect Henri Sauvage designed it, and Francis Jourdain decorated it. The lamps created by Larche were available for sale in the pavilion that celebrated the icon. The lamps’ Loie Fuller’ are held in the museums’ collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the Villa Stuck Museum in Germany.