Attribué à Johan Tobias Sergel (1740-1814)
Dieu Fleuve
inscrit au crayon "S"
Terre cuite
D'après le dieu fluvial Euphrate de Giambologna
Le socle avec fragment d'étiquette en papier,
hauteur 42,5, 40 x 31,5 cm
Probablement de la succession du sculpteur Johan Tobias Sergel, dans son registre des successions du 12 mai 1814, "1 Figur, FlodGud, af bränd lera" est enregistré, dans le vestibule du manoir Sponga, paroisse d'Ärila, Södermanland Acquis par le propriétaire actuel dans le cadre d'une vente anonyme de propriété aux enchères en 2023
Estimation : 200.000 / 250.000 €
Prix au marteau :
N° de lot : 623
-Oscar Antonsson: Sergel's Youth and Rome Time, Stockholm 1942, page 154, compares Milon executed in terracotta by Sergel; page 207, regarding Giambologna's influence; plate 12, compares the modeling of the tree trunk in Mercury and Psyche; plates 14 & 15, compare the treatment of musculature in Tobias with the fish; plate 20, compare detail of the painting in Sergel's own signature on Faunen
-Ragnar Josephson: Sergel's fantasy, previous part, Stockholm 1956, page 152ff, image 156f, compare Milon executed in terracotta, page 271, text and image 380, section on the river god
Nordén Auktioner, Art and antiques, autumn auction 1997, no. 276, Milon breaks the oak, terracotta, by Johan Tobias Sergel
-Magnus Olausson & Eva-Lena Karlsson ed.: Sergel and his Roman circle - European terracottas 1760-1814, Stockholm 2004, page 46ff, article on Sergel and the terracotta; page 108, compare drying and burning cracks on the sculpture Achilles and the centaur Chiron; page 188 & 196, compare picture and text about Herkules Farnese
This newly discovered sculpture depicting a river god is likely the same one that was recorded in the estate register of the artist Johan Tobias Sergel from Sponga on 12 May 1814 and which has since been missing for over two centuries. From the list it appears that in the vestibule at Sponga manor you were met by Sergel’s masterpiece Otryades, modeled in terracotta in 1779, and the Faun, also executed in terracotta in 1770, as well as a River God in the same material. Other terracotta sculptures were found in the « Large Atelier » and « Smaller Atelier ». Thanks to a far-sighted intervention by the civil servant Fredrik Samuel Silverstolpe, who after a career as a diplomat became head of the Office of the Inspector-General 1813–1836 and head of the Royal Museum, a number of key works from Sergel’s production were secured. The collections in Royal museum would later form the basis of the National Museum.
Professor Ragnar Josephson writes, in his monograph Sergel’s fantasy: « Sergel’s plastic sketches are largely preserved. The credit goes to Fredrik Samuel Silverstoples who, after Sergel’s death, proposed on June 27, 1815, that the state must purchase all of the sculptor’s models in fired clay or wax. It there were thirty-one such pieces. The reasoning is strange. These models are of so much greater interest to the artists, as they partly belong to the artist’s own hand can alone give to the work, have never been left for casting or even been modeled, and have finally been so valued by the artist himself that he would have sold them for nothing. »This is the first time in Swedish art and museum history that an artist’s sketches have been so highly esteemed and so carefully cared for by the public. »
A comparison with the National Museum’s existing works from the state purchase in 1815 and the estate register shows that all the terracotta sculptures were bought in except for the river god, whose further fate was subsequently raised in obscurity and eluded art historians. Ragnar Josephson writes: « Finally, in his sketchbook there is a drawing in the Puget style. Since we know that he modeled a river god, which was after his death in his Stockholm home, but is now lost, it can be suspected that it was added in Paris. » In the valuation of the property, it appears that Otryades and Faunen were valued at 15 riksdaler, while the River God received a more cautious valuation of 4 riksdaler, however, it can be put in relation to the terracotta relief Herkules Farnese, which was also valued at 4 riksdaler.
The source of inspiration for the River God is the Flemish-Italian sculptor Giambologna’s river god Euphrates, executed in terracotta around 1575, as a model for the monumental Sea Fountain in the Boboli Gardens, Florence. Giambologna sculpted the final version of the marble fountain where the river gods Euphrates, Gagnes and Nile sit below Neptune, commissioned by Grand Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici, whose son Ferdinando I de’ Medici founded the Villa Medici in Rome. The art historian Oscar Antonsson states in his book Sergel’s youth and Roman times that Sergel was strongly influenced by Giambologna’s mannerist sculptures, in the same way that the ancient world of form opened up through spectacular collections of Roman sculpture and not least the archaeological breakthroughs made through excavations during the 18th century in Italy.
Sergel had received a state scholarship on October 14, 1766, to travel to Italy and immerse himself in the country’s rich architecture, sculpture and painting. Between the years 1767–1778 he stayed in Italy, after which he returned home via Paris and London, before he was back on Swedish soil in the summer of 1779. During the period 1768-1774, basically all of Sergel’s Roman sculpture works were conceived in a sequence, where the terracotta occupies a special position under his years in Italy. Ragnar Josephson writes: « There was no kiln for firing at the Art Academy then, just as there is none to this day. In Rome, Sergel learned the Italian method of firing the Italian clay suited to it; the terracotta was the original work, and preserved all the nuances of the modeling hand, which plaster casts did not. »
One of Sergel’s earliest surviving works from Italy is the terracotta sculpture Milon, which has points of contact with French sculptor Edme Dumont’s reception piece, Milon de Crotone, executed in marble in 1768 (Louvre inventory number MR 1839). Sergel’s Milon was part of the collections at Huseby bruk and had reportedly been acquired by Professor George Stephens in the 1840s from the artist Egron Lundgren. The sculpture was sold in 1997 via Nordén’s auctions in Stockholm. Unlike the River God, Milon is more sketchy but still connects with the same powerful expression in the elaborate male body and its muscular strength. The river god glorifies the human body, a key interest of humanism, balancing on one foot the figure creates an impression of exaggerated physical strength. Among Sergel’s legacy was also the high relief Herkules Farnese from around 1770, which, as mentioned, was valued at the same amount as the River God. In the three-dimensionally modeled terracotta relief, the mythical Hercules appears with all his raw strength conveyed through Sergel’s sense of form and anatomical knowledge. What Milon, Herkules Farnese and the River God have in common is that they were all executed during the time when Sergel created large free sculpture, where basically all of them were preceded by copying antique sculpture.
Not only did Giambologna inspire Sergel in the 18th century, the French sculptor Jean-Jacques Caffieri also showed a plaster model entitled Un Fleuve at the Paris Salon of 1757 (No. 133), which was also executed in marble as his reception piece to the Academy on 28 April 1759 and was shown at Salon the same year (no. 148). Caffieri, who in the years 1749-1753 was a scholar at the Villa Medici, had evidently seen Giambologna’s river god and made his own variation which can be found in the collections at the Louvre. Also worth noting in this context is another marble sculpture in the Louvre, also entitled Un Fleuve, and attributed to Caffieri’s manner. The sculpture has an obvious kinship to the auction’s terracotta of the River God and Giambologna’s river god Euphrates. On his return from Italy, Sergel spent a few months in Paris in 1778, where he met the director of the academy, Jean Baptiste Marie Pierre, who complimented Sergel on his Faun and asked him to make a reception piece for the French Academy of Arts. The subject chosen by Sergel was the Otryades, which was shown to the board of the academy in a plaster cast after the modeled terracotta. Among the members were several of the famous contemporary artists and the sculptor Caffieri, who accepted Sergel as agrée at the French Academy.
A common feature of many of Sergel’s terracotta sculptures are firing defects as a result of the difficult-to-control firing kilns in which the clay was fired, Sergel himself writes in correspondence that he always worked with fine-grained Roman clay, which he got used to during his scholarship period in Italy. Furthermore, the sculptures were reinforced with forged iron tines to give stability to the massive clay, which is evident from damage to the River God and Milon but also from x-rays of the sculpture Germanicus in the National Museum, Stockholm. Some of the preserved terracottas at the National Museum are signed by Sergel in clay, for example the Faun and Herkules Farnese, whose writing is reminiscent of the River God’s inscribed S in pencil. Georg Göthe writes about the signing of Sergel’s portrait: « His most common signatures were ‘Sergel’ with or without a subsequent ‘f’ (ecit) and the year. But other signatures also occur, especially in the older period: ‘S’, ‘I S ‘, ‘I S’ in monogram, ‘S-l’, ‘J. Sergel’.
