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Artworks
Henri Laurens France, 1885-1954
Compotier et grappe de raisin, c. 1922-27Wood relief60.8 by 98.7 cm (24 by 38⅞ in.)Inscribed with the artist's monogram 'HL' (lower left)55114© 2021 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris$950,000Further images
Executed circa 1922-27, this work is accompanied by a photo-certificate issued by Claude Laurens, dated October 1, 1988. In 1928 Charles Templeton Crocker, heir to one of the four great...Executed circa 1922-27, this work is accompanied by a photo-certificate issued by Claude Laurens, dated October 1, 1988. In 1928 Charles Templeton Crocker, heir to one of the four great American railroad fortunes, traveled to Paris to commission a trove of furnishings and decorative objects for his San Francisco penthouse. A musician and aesthete with a keen eye for design, Crocker had long admired the Art Deco motifs emerging from the French capital and sought to popularize the style in the United States. The commission was soon effectuated by Jean-Michel Frank with the assistance of two of the most influential designers of the era, Pierre Legrain and Jean Dunand. Crocker’s vast wealth and large duplex allowed the designers ample room for their creative endeavors. After about a year, the selection of approximately 400 pieces of furniture, art, screens, reliefs and accessories were assembled and delivered to the Crocker apartment and together comprised one of the preeminent Art Deco showcases in the country.At Frank’s direction, the sculptor Henri Laurens created three pieces for the apartment: two ironworks, including a grand abstract stair railing which led up to the sunroom, and the present relief in wood, Compotier et grappe de raisin. Related to a similar 1922 work in terracotta, Compotier et grappe de raisin was executed in wood on a larger scale and was designed to command the sunroom. Crocker and Frank decided it should stand alone in the room, and the work was boldly embedded in the oak paneling across from the entryway. A rare example of Laurens’ unpainted reliefs and one of his only sculptures in wood, the present work captures the Cubist idiom for which the artist was known and asserts itself as a bold exemplar of French Modernism. While Laurens created a small number of related reliefs in the 1920s, such still lifes were created in plaster, terracotta and bronze and often painted in polychrome, offering materially different impressions and contexts from that of the sleek and nuanced wood iteration. Blurring the line between fine art and design, Crocker’s magnificent collection remained intact in the apartment until more than a decade after his passing in 1948.
Provenance
Mr. and Mrs. Templeton Crocker, San Francisco
Private Collection
Literature
P.-E. Martin-Vivier, Jean-Michel Frank, l'étrange luxe du rien, Paris, 2006, illustrated p. 128 (illustrated in a photograph; mentioned pp. 127-134)
