Rembrandt Bugatti: "Doe suckling her two fawns", circa 1904.

"It wasnot to him that it should have been said that animals have no soul: he discovered it and brought it to life under his artistic hands. And therein probably lies the secret of this creator, the gift he possessed and which remains alive in everything he produced"[1]

 

Created in 1904, this sculpture was the work of Rembrandt Bugatti, who was just 21 years old and had recently moved to Paris. A lifelong animal lover, the young sculptor took advantage of his new environment to frequent the Menagerie at the Jardin des Plantes assiduously, where he regularly visited the animals and sometimes even tended to them, as evidenced by period photographs showing him feeding the animals or cleaning their living spaces.

Rembrandt Bugatti feeding a deer at Antwerp Zoo in 1906">

 

Sharing their daily lives, Bugatti became a reassuring presence for them, whom they stopped worrying about and treated as a fellow human being. In so doing, the artist achieved a genuine familiarity with his furry and feathered friends, whom he could now depict"in their truest and most unseen attitudes"[2]. Bugatti set up his portable workbench next to these animals, which had accepted him, and modelled them freehand in plastiline[3], without any instruments or preparatory sketches, in a rapid, highly spontaneous process. He never studied animal anatomy, preferring to rely on his eye and feeling to transcribe the empirical truth of his models. It is in this sense that his sculpture has been described as"impressionistic"[4 ] for its synthetic yet evocative aspect.

Rembrandt BUGATTI (Milan 16 October 1884 - 8 January 1916 Paris)
"Biche allaitant ses deux faons" (Doe suckling her two fawns), circa 1904
Sculpture in bronze with shaded brown patina.
Lost-wax anthume casting by A.A.Hebrard.">

 

Indeed, far from pompous poses or hackneyed romanticism, his animals are lively portraits, which always seem to have been taken from life, and in which the imperturbable gravity of the animals triumphs. Born of his ingenuous love of fauna, this approach allows Rembrandt Bugatti's art to illustrate Auguste Rodin 's assertion in 1901[5 ] that:

"the only interesting, lively, useful movement for the artist is the movement that the model accomplishes, when nature alone imposes its laws on him."

Rembrandt BUGATTI (Milan 16 October 1884 - 8 January 1916 Paris)
"Biche allaitant ses deux faons", circa 1904
Sculpture en bronze à patine brune nuancé.
Lost wax anthume casting by A.A.Hebrard.">

 

This is particularly true of our"Doe suckling her two fawns", as the peaceful deer of the Jardin des Plantes are more fearful than other animals, this natural atavism being reinforced by the maternal instinct. So who can say how many hours, how many days of mutual taming must have passed before Bugatti witnessed this breast-feeding first-hand? In any case, the result is a dazzling display of shared emotion, so tender does the scene seem to emanate from the very heart of Rembrandt Bugatti. The sculptor chose to depict the mother with her young under her flank. She seems to be on the lookout, her head bent to listen for the slightest suspicious noise, while her hooves are anchored to the ground and her hocks tense in anticipation of a hypothetical escape. We are moved by the intimacy of the scene and its flavour of a moment stolen from these peaceful herbivores that the slightest noise is usually enough to send them fleeing.

The work of the caster and the patina are also decisive in this creation, which has a superb paradox. The aim is to restore the allure of the earth to the bronze, a feat that few publishers have mastered or have the means to achieve. Among them, however, were Adrien-Aurélien Hébrard, Bugatti's exclusive publisher from 1904 onwards, and his Milanese foundryman Albino Palazzolo, whose bronzes were described by one critic[6] as"supple and quivering with life".

Absolutely faithful to Bugatti's intentions, Hébrard's lost-wax castings were to establish him as one of the greatest sculptors of his time. The pressure of the artist's fingers, the caress of his palms and the powerful modelling of his thumbs have come down to us through the grace of this fusion of understanding with his founder. Sublimated by a deep patina that hugs and emphasises the subtlest reliefs of the deer, the scene seems shrouded in that poetic atmosphere that the Japanese call"komorebi" ("木漏れ日"): the sunlight filtering through the leaves of the trees.

Rembrandt BUGATTI (Milan 16 October 1884 - 8 January 1916 Paris)
"Biche allaitant ses deux faons", circa 1904
Sculpture en bronze à patine brune nuancé.
Fonte anthume à cire perdue par A.A.Hebrard.">

 

Produced (to the best of our knowledge) in three numbered copies using the lost-wax process, this sculpture"Biche allaitant ses deux faons" (Hind suckling her two fawns) is a rare and precious work combining the youthful ardour of Rembrant Bugatti, the synthetic grace of his sculpture and the refinement of Adrien Aurélien Hébrard's casting and patina. It is also a testimony, the vision of an artist tormented by immense sensitivity and anguish that could be silenced by a single thought:

"I hope and believe that I will succeed in creating a work that no animal sculptor, ancient or modern, has ever done"[7].