Important Bronze

Louis Marcel BOTINELLY (1883 - 1962) "The Childhood of Bacchus" Important bronze sculpture with antique green patina representing a naked young woman, lying down and Bacchus as a child. Rests on a silver tiered base with a later wash leaf. Length 79 cm, height 29 cm Signed "Louis Botinelly" and stamp of the foundry "lost wax Leblanc Barbedienne Paris" Louis Botinelly, born in Digne on January 2, 1883, is the son of a marble worker and stonemason, originally from the canton of Ticino (Switzerland) and established in this city at the time of the birth of Louis. The family then settled in Marseilles, rue Saint-Pierre, in a workshop which Botinelly's father had inherited on the death of his brother. Thanks to a scholarship from the city of Marseille, Louis Botinelly was able to stay in Italy in 1902 where he worked in the studio of Jules Coutan. In 1905, he was received first at the National School of Fine Arts in Paris. He moved to the capital in 1906, where he produced a large number of his works. He married a young lady Jeanne Gaillard, in Riez, in 1908. In 1911, he obtained a bronze medal for his Bear Trainer. He was mobilized in 1914 in the 7th engineer regiment in Avignon. After the war, he divorced on May 27, 1921 to remarry in Marseilles on December 21, 1921 with Madeleine Nicolet whom he met in Avignon. He moved to 14 rue Buffon where he had his studio which he refurbished in 1933 when his daughter was born. Like many French sculptors of the time, he received orders for several war memorials in memory of combatants, including that of the city of Avignon, for which he received the sum of 30,100 francs. In 1943, the German occupation army, having decided to recover the bronze from the street furniture, had several statues removed, including those of Pierre-Antoine Berryer, Lamartine, Victor Gelu, the Blind and the Paralytic and the Bear Trainer. This last statue could be saved thanks to the intervention of Louis Botinelly and remounted on its base on February 25, 1945. Louis Botinelly died on March 26, 1962 in his apartment on rue Buffon; he rests in the cemetery of Plan-de-Cuques. A street in Marseille bears his name. Botinelly's style is a mixture of figurative tradition and modernity. If he does not innovate, he knows how to evolve with the spirit of the times. The Asian Colonies and African Colonies designed for the competition launched by the city of Marseilles in 1911, but whose realization was deferred until 1925 because of the war of 1914-1918, still testify to the Beaux-Arts style while Le Docker ( 1936), on the façade of the Marseille labor exchange, is influenced by art nouveau. Botinelly will continue to evolve, abandoning point size for direct size and working with modern materials such as concrete.