VENUS WITH DOVES

GILBERT PRIVAT (1892–1969)
French

Date : 1928

Dimensions : 80 × 40 × 18 cm

Material : White Carrara marble

Signature : “Gilbert Privat”

Biography

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Historical and artistic context

The sculpture depicts a nude woman kneeling on a plain rectangular base. The body is in slight torsion, the knees on the ground and the thighs folded beneath her. The torso is upright, the head tilted gently back and upward in a movement of elevation. Both arms are extended vertically above the head, the joined hands supporting a sculpted group of doves and roses.

The treatment of the marble reveals the full extent of Privat’s technical mastery: the volumes are refined and synthetic, and the polished surface renders the softness of the female figure he favoured, with those rounded forms and slender limbs that constitute his signature.

The iconography draws on the antique tradition of Venus, reinterpreted within an Art Deco register. The doves, a classical attribute symbolising love and peace, hold particular importance within Privat’s iconographic language. Having served in the First World War, he was celebrated both for his military conduct and for the commemorative sculptures he created in the aftermath of liberation following both world conflicts.

The artist’s catalogue raisonné records several casts of this subject in plaster, terracotta and bronze. The existence of this marble example attests to the sculptor’s particular attachment to the subject, which he revisited and developed throughout his career in a variety of forms.

A historical episode is associated with Privat’s marble Vénus aux colombes: during the Occupation, between 1940 and 1944, his studio assistants concealed the work beneath sandbags in a workshop in Malakoff, in order to protect it from bombing and from the risk of seizure by the Germans. The theme of Venus and female figures associated with doves is recurrent in Privat’s work. A Jeune fille aux colombes, commissioned by Mr Hearst for a decorative fountain in his Californian gardens, may also correspond to the sculpture from the Malakoff studio. This episode speaks to the importance that those close to Privat attached to his marble Venuses.