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Aristide Maillol

French, 1861-1944

La Nuit (Night)

La Nuit (Night)

La Nuit (Night), 1902-1909 (cast executed 1939)

Currently on View

lead

1/6

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

James G. Forsyth Fund, 1939

1939:10.1

Inscriptions:

signature, undated / top of base, under right thigh / M

stamp; foundry mark / back of base / Alexis Rudier / Fondeur, Paris

Provenance:

sold by G. Jacquart, Paris to Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo, August 28, 1939

Object Classifications:

Sculpture

Cast (sculpture)

Information may change due to ongoing research. Glossary of Terms

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