Aristide Maillol
French, 1861-1944
La Nuit (Night), 1902-1909 (cast executed 1939)
Artwork Details
Currently on View
Materials
lead
Edition:
1/6
Measurements
overall: 41 1/2 x 24 x 43 1/2 inches (105.41 x 60.96 x 110.49 cm)
Collection Buffalo AKG Art Museum
Credit
James G. Forsyth Fund, 1939
Accession ID
1939:10.1
Night is the result of Aristide Maillol’s interpretation of the somber and heavy eighteenth-century sculptures he encountered in the gardens of Versailles outside of Paris. It is composed of a series of lines that both represent a figure and evoke the shape of a cube. The model for this work was the artist’s wife. Her pose is simultaneously brooding and powerful. In 1909, upon viewing an earlier cast of Night in an exhibition, sculptor Auguste Rodin remarked, “One forgets too easily that the human body is an architecture, a living architecture.”
Label from Picasso: The Artist and His Models, November 5, 2016–February 19, 2017
