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René Lalique “Automne” Gold and Basse-Taille Enamel Pendant
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This French Art Nouveau masterpiece, the "Automne" pendant, is one of the allegorical jewels that René Lalique created to celebrate the beauties of the natural world. The season of Autumn is personified in basse-taille enamel and gold among the leaves of the European plane tree. A pale female face with dark, luxuriant hair is depicted among a cascade of beautifully-modeled leaves and seed balls that over-spill the arabesques of delicate branches. Pair this pendant with your favorite delicate chain, worn as a true piece of art.
- Product Details
- Curator's Notes
Item #: PT-19844
Artist: René Lalique
Country: France
Circa: 1898-1900
Size: 3.75’' length, 1.25’' width (at widest point)
Materials: Basse-taille enamel; 18K Gold; Together with original fitted embossed leather box, the silk lining of the case with gilt mark "R. Lalique/20 Rue Thérèse/Paris"
Signed: "Lalique"
Literature: Pendant pictured in René Lalique: Schmuck und Objets d'art, by Sigrid Barten, 1890-1910, Munich, 1977, p. 305, cat. no. 599; Pendant also pictured in The Jewellery of René Lalique, exh. cat., The Goldsmiths' Company, London, 1987, p. 145, cat. no. 144; Pendant also pictured in Art Nouveaux Jewelry, by Vivienne Becker, New York, 1998, p. 39, pl. 37; Pendant also pictured in Art Nouveau, The French Aesthetic, by Victor Arwas, London, 2002, p. 34; Pendant also pictured in From Slave to Siren: The Victorian Woman and her Jewelry From Neoclassic to Art Nouveau, by Dora Jane Janson, Exh. cat., Duke University Museum of Art. Durham, N. C., 1971, p. 78, no. 164, colorpl. 15 (Mrs. Gladys Koch collection); Pendant also pictured in Metropolitan Jewelry, Sophie McConnell, New York, 1991, p. 29, ill. (color)
Exhibition History: Pendant exhibited at the Cooper Union Museum for the Arts of Decoration, in "Nineteenth Century Jewelry from the First Empire to the First World War," 1955, no. 278; New York; Pendant also exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in "La Belle Époque," from December 6, 1982 to September 4, 1983, unnumbered checklist (p. 15)
This pendant by René Lalique is one of the purest forms of his “jewelry of ideas”—the thoroughly modern concept that the value of the artist’s original insights and intellect occupies a place far above the intrinsic worth of gems and gold. The accompanying fitted box, with its embossed surface of scattered autumn leaves, dates the pendant to the 1890s, the seminal period of Lalique’s art in the medium of jewelry.