The works of Albert Cheuret do not run the streets and are often desired in the auction room. The collection of Claude and Simone Dray, scattered in Paris at Christie's last June, which housed a dozen lights in bronze and alabaster gently brought us closer to this sculptor of which we know practically nothing.
As Christie's notes in the catalog ...
The works of Albert Cheuret do not run the streets and are often desired in the auction room. The collection of Claude and Simone Dray, scattered in Paris at Christie's last June, which housed a dozen lights in bronze and alabaster gently brought us closer to this sculptor of which we know practically nothing.
As Christie's notes in the catalog of the sale: "We know that he studied sculpture with Jacques Perrin and Georges Lemaire before opening his own studio 11, avenue Franco-Russe, in Paris; From 1907, he exhibited regularly at the Salon des artistes français and during the international exhibition of 1925 in Paris, he opened a shop on the Alexandre-III bridge, where he exhibited animal subjects as well as furniture, clocks and a large An array of bronze and alabaster fixtures, his specialty. "Albert Cheuret often represented birds - herons, raptors, pheasants ... - using a naturalistic or much more geometric style. The knowledge about this sporadic artist seems to stop there. In Orléans, the auction house Binoche and Maredsous made a discovery. In succession, he was entrusted with the works of Cheuret, whose present owners knew absolutely nothing except that they had furnished the villa of their grandparents on the Côte d'Azur ... So far the scenario is Rather classic. The surprise comes from elsewhere. "Two of them are so rare that the artist's great-grandson, a cabinetmaker in Orleans, was unaware of the existence of these models. It is a trained cobra, a subject common at the time but unknown at Cheuret and a pair of lamps with snakes confronted, "says Binoche. It is on these two objects and on the chandelier Aloes, a classic, that Jean-Marc Maury, expert of the sale, has carried the highest estimates. "A difficult exercise! We have based ourselves on those of the last sales. "Certainly Albert Cheuret is not Edgar Brandt and his creations are uneven: some reveal a paw of extreme concision, others, on the contrary, are more awkward.
