Gerges Gardet 1863-1939. Seated Bear Bronze Cast Iron Siot

Georges Gardet 1863-1939 Seated bronze bear signed G.GARDET on the terrace beautiful reddish brown patina bears a Siot Paris stamp and the number 677G on the terrace, sand cast, rests on a green marble. A larger copy (30cm) is in the Grenoble museum. Georges Gardet (1863-1939) is the son of the sculptor Joseph Gardet and the brother of the sculptor Joseph-Antoine Gardet. He attended the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the workshops of Aimé Millet and Emmanuel Frémiet. His wife, Madeleine, was the sister of the painter and decorator Jean Francis Auburtin (1866-1930) who participated with him in the Universal Exhibition of 1900. His talent attracted many orders from amateurs who wanted to keep effigies of their pets or decorate the gardens and parks of their homes, but also many official orders both in France and abroad. He was promoted to the rank of officer of the Legion of Honor in 1900. He was a member of the Academy of Fine Arts and the Society of French Artists. He died in 1939 in Paris and is buried in the Montparnasse cemetery, alongside his father. Like many artists before him, Georges Gardet practiced sculpture on two levels. Official or private orders often resulted in the execution of monumental groups intended to decorate public places and aristocratic homes. However, he also created small-format works intended or not for publication. Gardet's career was launched by the success of his large sculptures at the Salon. He quickly received offers to purchase and orders from the State or the City of Paris (for example, the 1900 World's Fair). Other orders also came from abroad: Mexico (eagle intended to surmount the dome of the Legislative Palace; seated lions framing the entrance to Chapultepec Park), Winnipeg (Manitoba Legislative Palace), Brussels (Laaken Palace), Ethiopia, etc. Gardet's approach to sculpture differed from that of his predecessors: Gardet in fact renewed the materials traditionally used by animal artists. He not only produced plasters, which were often translated into bronze, but his preference went to rich materials such as ivory or polychrome marble; several of his sculptures were also the subject of replicas in Sèvres biscuit. Thus breaking with a tradition made essentially of bronzes, he opened his art to the decorative and the art object.