‘La Nature Se Dévoliant Devant La Science’

A Fine Multipatinated Bronze Figure by Louis-Ernest Barrias Cast by Susse Freres. Paris, Circa 1900

‘La Nature Se Dévoliant Devant La Science’ - nature revealing herself before Science; a very fine multipatinated bronze figure with varied gilt highlights and green tinted Scarab Beatle by Louis-Ernest Barrias (1874 – 1905), cast by Susses Freres. Signed: ‘E. Barrias’, inscribed: ‘Susse Fres Edts Paris’. Stamped: ‘P’ and with the ‘Susses Freres Editeurs Paris’ Cachet. This important bronze figure is a finely cast example of Barrias's most celebrated work, a homage to advances made in scientific exploration and a masterpiece of early Art Nouveau. The figure depicts a young woman, the allegory of Nature, removing her veil to reveal her face and bare breasts to the cold gaze of science.

The figure first appeared in white marble at the Paris Salon of 1893 with the longer title of 'La Nature mystérieuse et voilée se découvre devant la Science’ in its fully nude form. Suitably it was purchased by the medical faculty at l'Ecole de Médecine in Bordeaux. Barrias returned to the theme a few years later exhibiting a related sculpture at the 1899 Salon, simply titled ‘La Nature se dévoilant'.

Following in the spirit of pioneers of polychromy such as Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier and Eugène Cornu this figure was carved using expensive and luxurious materials such as Algerian onyx for the drapery, lapis lazuli for the ribbon and malachite for the scarab. This figure is now in the collection of the Musée d’Orsay.

A final version in white marble was made in 1902 and acquired by the École de Medicine in Paris.

Above: ‘La Nature se dévoilant', exhibited in 1889

Left: The 1902 Version in white marble

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The first bronze casts were exhibited by Susse Frères, in various sizes and to great critical acclaim, at the 1900 Exposition Universelle. Awarded a prestigious Grand Prix at the Liège Exhibition of 1905, the renowned bronzier Théodore Millet deemed the bronze figure a ‘tour de force’ for the Susse firm and proclaimed it 'the finest of the works exhibited'. Louis-Ernest Barrias

Louis-Ernest Barrias (1841 – 1905) was one of the most celebrated and influential sculptors of the late nineteenth century. Along with contemporaries such as Frédéric Auguste

Bartholdi (of Statue of Liberty fame), Barrias was influential in re-inventing a new sophisticated approach to allegorical representation. This refined approach is evident in the romantic figure of Nature Revealing Herself, but also in the handling of themes of modernity such as his Allegory to Electricity for

the Gallery of Machines at the 1889 Exposition Universelle. Born in Paris into a family of well known artists, Louis-Ernest started his career as a painter studying under Léon Cogniet. He later took up sculpture studying under Pierre-Jules Cavelier and following his admittance to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1858, François Jouffroy. In 1865 Barrias won the Prix de Rome and was involved in the decoration of the Paris Opéra and the Hôtel de la Païva in the Champs-Élysées.

In 1878 he was made a Knight of the Legion of Honour, an officer in 1881, and a commander in 1900. Barrias replaced Dumont at the Institut de France in 1884 and succeeded Cavelier as professor at the École des Beaux-Arts in the same year. Barrias in his studio

Allegory to Electricity for the

Gallery of Machines at the 1889

Exposition Universelle

Susse Frères Tracing its origins to 1758, the Paris foundry of Susse Frères is one of the oldest art foundries in Europe. Originally a stationery company they were appointed suppliers to Empress Marie Louise from 1812 and the Duc de Berry from 1818. Following the 1830 revolution they were granted a Royal Warrant as an official supplier to the monarchy.

By the early 1830’s the firm was selling small bronze statuettes and began to focus seriously on the process of bronze casting as early as 1839. Under the direction of the brothers, Michel Victor and Amedee Susse, they produced in that year a six-page catalogue of bronze sculpture. In 1847 the firm obtained the right to use the Sauvage procedure for reduction, similar to the technique invented by Achille Collas and employed by Ferdinand Barbedienne. The ability to produce reductions of large scale bronzes enabled Susse Frères to create editions of work in various sizes and opened up the market to collectors and to commercial success. Michel Victor Susse died in 1860 leaving Amedee as the sole director of the foundry until 1880, when Albert Susse became the director.

Above& Above Left: Frontispieces from Susse

Frères Catalogue of Bronzes

Sauvage and his Reducteur Mechanique

Susse Frères obtained the rights to produce editions of the works of some of the most important French sculptors of the nineteenth century including: James Pradier, Pierre-Jules Mêne , Auguste Cain , Pierre-Nicolas Turgenev , Yevgeny Alexandrovich Lanceray, Louis-Ernest Barrias , Jules Dalou , Alexandre Falguière and Mathurin Moreau.

The list of Editions by Barrias in the Susse Frères 1905 Sales Catalogue

Renowned for the quality of its casting and rich multipatinated finishes, the firm exhibited with notable success at many of the great exhibitions of the nineteenth century, receiving a prize medal at the 1851 Great Exhibition in London and a Grand Prix at the 1905 Lieges Exposition Universelle amongst other awards.

Iconography and Allegory In this sculptural tour de force, Barrias draws upon allegorical and didactic themes from Renaissance and Baroque sculpture to create a figure that is visually striking - intimate and coquettish, yet provocative and revelatory. From ancient times allegory has been used to portray complex intellectual ideas and none has been more important in the history of art, than the concept of nature’s mystery. The iconography of Barrias’s figure plays into the historical trope of the Veil of Isis: the allegorical figure of the mythical veiled Egyptian goddess, who from ancient times represented the hidden mysteries of nature.

Barrias’s Medals from The Great

Exhibition, London 1851

The Susse stand at the Exposition Universelle of 1900

The Scarab Beatle pinning the folds of the drapery, beneath the exposed bosom of the figure, acts as a signifier to the Egyptian origin of the representation and alludes perhaps to a more complex symbolism of death and resurrection and the contradictory character of nature itself. Perhaps it is a subtle warning that natures secrets maybe revealed, but at a cost. There have always been two

contradictory approaches to

understanding nature and as Heraclitus

pronounced Phusis kruptesthai philei –

‘Nature loves to hide’. The philosopher Pierre Hadot in his book ‘The Veil of Isis: An Essay on

the History of the Idea of Nature’, identifies the two approaches to nature as the

Promethian, which through scientific

investigation and discovery attempts

to dominate nature and forcibly

remove her veil, and the Orphic or

poetic approach which seeks a unity

with nature and views her

divestment as a vulgar and

uncivilised act.

In Europe from the time of the Enlightenment scientific investigation played an increasingly important role in everyday life and Western consciousness. With the increasing pace of discovery, with mankind harnessing almost magical forces such as electricity and X-rays, it was only natural as the nineteenth century drew to a close, as Steven Armstrong writes, to conceive of this scientific progress as ‘Removing the Veil’. Barrias conceived this figural masterpiece therefore at a time when the two opposing ideas of nature were perhaps at their most divergent. Yet the genius of his sculptural approach and the relationship of his iconography to his artistic expression achieve something more tangible – a romantic vision of nature. As Hadot suggests there is an alternative approach to the unveiling of Isis (or nature), an expression non datur, one suggested by the Romantic vision of Rousseau, Goethe, and Schelling, an allegorical expression of the sublime - ‘Nature is art and art is nature’.

Genius unveiling a bust of nature by Goethe with the bust of nature in the form of the veiled polymastic Isis

Detail of the Scarab holding the drapery

Literature: Hadot, Pierre, The Veil of Isis: an Essay on the History of the Idea of Nature, Harvard University Press.

P.Fusco and H.W Janson, The Romantics to Rodin, Exhib, cat. Los Angeles Museum of Art,

1980, pp. 118, 120, no. 10.

Max Collignon, The Journal of ancient and modern art, 3rd year t. VI, No. 30, September 10,

p. 191-198, Paris, 1899.

Armstrong, Steven, The Veil of Isis: The Evolution of an Archetype Hidden in Plain Sight