Charles Korschmann "Femme aux fleurs" Lighted Sculpture
Regular price
$12,500
This exquisite lighted sculpture by Charles Korschmann depicts a femme aux fleurs flanked by two calla lilies, their broad leaves curling around the hem of her dress and merging with the base. The lily blossoms originally accommodated tubular Edison bulbs whose relatively low light output illuminated little beyond the immediate vicinity of the figure. Such subdued illumination underscores the essentially sculptural character of Art Nouveau lighting of this type: the electric light serves less to illuminate a room than to animate the object itself. Her head, neck, décolletage, and arms, together with the calla lily blossoms and base, are rendered in gilt bronze, while her dress and the lilies’ foliage are finished in contrasting patinated bronze. A poppy adorns her hair, introducing a flower particularly resonant with the decadent imagery of the fin de siècle.
With its associations with sleep, intoxication, dreams, and death, the poppy became a potent motif in late nineteenth-century art and design. Its narcotic associations were equally significant. Opium, derived from the latex of the opium poppy, occupied a prominent place in the period’s literary and artistic imagination, particularly within bohemian and Decadent circles. European fantasies surrounding the drug were frequently entwined with Orientalism, expressed both in representations of urban opium dens and in the creation of exoticized Chinese- and Japanese-inspired smoking rooms within fashionable interiors. The poppy could therefore evoke not only sleep but an imagined realm of reverie and escape.
Yet the flower’s symbolic history long predates the fin de siècle. Poppies and poppy-like capsules appear in the imagery of agricultural and fertility deities across the ancient Mediterranean and Near East and became particularly associated with Demeter, the Greek goddess of agriculture and the harvest. Korschmann thus crowns his figure with an emblem whose meanings oscillate between seemingly opposed states: fertility and death, wakefulness and sleep, abundance and oblivion. Below, a symmetrical crest of calla lily leaves ornaments the base, extending the sculpture’s floral imagery from the figure’s crown to its foot and reinforcing the organic unity characteristic of Art Nouveau design.
Item #: S-22414
Artist: Charles Korschann
Country: France
Circa: 1900's
Dimensions: 21" height, 4.75" diameter.
Materials: Patinated and Gilt Bronze
Signed: Ch. Korschann", with Louchet foundry mark
Item #: S-22414
Artist: Charles Korschann
Country: France
Circa: 1900's
Dimensions: 21" height, 4.75" diameter.
Materials: Patinated and Gilt Bronze
Signed: Ch. Korschann", with Louchet foundry mark
Charles Korschann, like Alphonse Mucha, was born in Moravia, then part of the austro-hungarian empire. He was trained at the academies of fine arts in Vienna and Berlin. Although he frequently returned to his native Moravia—then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and, after the First World War, incorporated into Czechoslovakia—he spent most of his career in Paris, where he settled in 1894. Korschann specialized in small-scale Art Nouveau sculpture and decorative objects, producing vases, inkwells, clocks, lamps, wall sconces, jardinières, and other functional works that frequently incorporate full-length female figures. His women are typically elegant and idealized, characterized by hieratic expressions and poses indebted to the Symbolist vocabulary of the period. Korschann exhibited at the Salons of the Société des Artistes Français from 1894 to 1905 and received a bronze medal at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris. Working in gilt and patinated bronze, pewter, and combinations of bronze with polychrome glazed and unglazed ceramics, he collaborated frequently with the Parisian bronze founder Louchet, which cast and edited many of his designs. Among his more explicitly sculptural commissions was a portrait bust of fellow Moravian artist Alphonse Mucha for the museum in Brno.
Charles Korschann, like Alphonse Mucha, was born in Moravia, then part of the austro-hungarian empire. He was trained at the academies of fine arts in Vienna and Berlin. Although he frequently returned to his native Moravia—then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and, after the First World War, incorporated into Czechoslovakia—he spent most of his career in Paris, where he settled in 1894. Korschann specialized in small-scale Art Nouveau sculpture and decorative objects, producing vases, inkwells, clocks, lamps, wall sconces, jardinières, and other functional works that frequently incorporate full-length female figures. His women are typically elegant and idealized, characterized by hieratic expressions and poses indebted to the Symbolist vocabulary of the period. Korschann exhibited at the Salons of the Société des Artistes Français from 1894 to 1905 and received a bronze medal at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris. Working in gilt and patinated bronze, pewter, and combinations of bronze with polychrome glazed and unglazed ceramics, he collaborated frequently with the Parisian bronze founder Louchet, which cast and edited many of his designs. Among his more explicitly sculptural commissions was a portrait bust of fellow Moravian artist Alphonse Mucha for the museum in Brno.
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