36

Francois-Xavier Lalanne

French, 1927-2008

Francois-Xavier Lalanne
(French, 1927-2008)

"Les Deux Capricornes Attables" Table

palladium leaf over gilt patinated bronze and glass top
monogrammed FXL, stamped LALANNE, dated 2009 and numbered 5/8.


h. 29", w. 41-3/8", l. 82-3/4"

Provenance: Galerie Mitterrand, Paris, acquired directly from the artist's studio, 2009 by
Dr. Nia Terezakis, New Orleans, Louisiana with assistance from Gay Wirth, Wirthmore Antiques, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Notes: Premium Lot: You must be pre-approved to bid on this lot. Please contact New Orleans Auction Galleries for more information.

"Animals have always fascinated me, perhaps because they are the only beings through whom one can enter into another world." Thus Francois-Xavier Lalanne summed up his lifelong fascination with every sort of animal, the principal if not exclusive subject of his exceptional oeuvre.

And to enter into Lalanne's own 'other world' is indeed to find oneself in a magical domain filled with mythical figures whether from Ancient Greek legend or modern celebrity; for Francois-Xavier (or FX as he was oft known), educated by the Jesuits, was as at home with classical literature as the most modish elite, his frame of reference spanning everything from Aeschylus and Ovid to such close friends as Yves St Laurent, the De Menils, Valentino and Marc Jacobs.

His work was imbued with this animistic spirit of the ancient world, he would often mention the time he spent as a guard at the Louvre where he was in charge of the Apis bull, but it was also part of the Surrealist legacy, of such friends as Max Ernst and Magritte. Thus that opening citation on animals continues in a pleasingly Surreal mood, "Otherwise one is stuck in the human world, in one's own image, like a man ceaselessly pacing in a house lined with mirrors, finding nothing but his own reflection."

Of course the reputation and career of FX was intimately linked to that of his wife, the fellow-sculptor Claude Lalanne, for from their very first exhibition they had termed themselves as a creative team, 'Les Lalanne', grammatically confusing in French but absolutely logical in every other respect. But though consistently sharing a name and adjoining studios their work was notably, easily identifiably, different and they only actually collaborated on a handful of works together.

FX was born in Angers in 1927 to a family that had made its fortune, appropriately enough, in cow bone fertiliser, whilst his father drove the sleekest racing cars, and one could conjour his own aesthetic genealogy from these elements, animal anatomy and modernist engineering, bodywork. After studying painting at l'Academie Julian, where he won first prize as the most promising student of his year, FX began working as an architectural draughtsman for a firm associated with Le Corbusier.

Indeed he continued with such drawings, as technical as creative, throughout his career. "It's true that when I sculpt animals I always begin with a drawing in profile, the most obvious way to get a grasp on their volume." And though he abandoned painting after one successful solo exhibition he later created some memorable coloured drawings and prints, "often, on air planes, I sketch whatever comes into my head in little notebooks."

He met Claude at the vernissage of this solo show at the Cimaise gallery in 1952 and soon they were living together at the Impasse Ronsin, an infamously bohemian cul-de-sac in Montparnasse, altogether rudimentary if not rustic with one shared lavatory and only an old wood stove for heat. But here their immediate neighbour and friend was none other than Constantin Brançusi, perhaps the greatest sculptor of the 20th century. Their immediate contemporaries included such young artists as Jean Tinguely and Nikki de St Phalle as well as Americans such as William Copley and the sculptor James Metcalf.

The Impasse had been an artists colony since 1870 and curiously two of its more celebrated earlier residents had been famous American 'animalier' sculptors; Eli Harvey whose work was particularly loved by Teddy Roosevelt, who had his elk on his White House desk, and Alexander Phimister Proctor whose fabled pumas that guard the entrance to Prospect Park in Brooklyn were actually designed at the Impasse in Paris. There is an obvious continuity between such work and Les Lalanne who managed, almost single or doubly handed, to keep that whole 'animalier' tradition alive well into the 21st century.

Whilst at the Impasse the young Lalannes were working together as window decorators and set designers, whether for the renowned couturier Christian Dior or choreographer Maurice Béjart. It was only with their first show at the celebrated gallery of Alexandre Iolas in Paris, that they really began those distinctive separate sculptural careers with which they would become so renowned.

It was also here that FX first came to prominence with his 'moutons', life-sized sheep that served as chairs and benches that were soon to be seen flocking together in every fashionable chateau and palace. The first such grouping of sheep were originally titled Pour Polypheme, a typical FX classical reference to the monster Polyphemus from the Odyssey. These sheep were an immediate success, critically and commercially, and still remain undoubtably the best known work by Les Lalanne.

This Iolas show in Paris travelled to America but now as an augmented museum exhibition - an immediate coup - at the Art Institute of Chicago, where it received a great deal of attention including a whole article in LIFE magazine. With the beginnings of such success they moved from the ramshackle Impasse Ronsin to find themselves in their own self-created paradise, a series of interlinked farmhouses and gardens in the village of Ury, outside of Fontainebleau.

Here Les Lalanne maintained their separate studios as well as a vibrant social life, hosting some of the most soigne soirees of that entire 1970s Parisian high-fashion scene which has now entered into legend. 'Ury' became a code word amongst a certain set of international beau mond e, a name to be dropped amongst the highest of haute bohemia and crustiest of gratin; for here one could sit on a 'Mouton' sipping 'Mouton' with an actual Rothschild Baron.

But whilst Les Lalanne were undoubtably good with the preposterously grand and eye wateringly wealthy they were also at their happiest just working every day in the studio and labouring in their gardens for as long as they could. To quote FX, "A house like this shelters all kinds of inhabitants, of which humans are only one, all sharing the same roof, yet each with its completely separate concerns and time scales. A swallow, for example, which spends six months at Ury nesting, will then take off for Aswan or Ouarzazate."

Certainly his own works took off for equally exotic parts, whether his grasshopper bar that was presented to the Duke of Edinburgh by President Pompidou, and still resides in the Royal Collection, his topiary dinos in Santa Monica, his poolside bird-chairs at the Frederick Weisman Art Foundation in Holmby Hills or some giant hippo hidden in a private Chinese collection

Over a fifty year career FX devoted himself to constant work, hardly a day was spent outside the studio, as a sculptor who worked on every imaginable scale, from the design of a house to public art projects, from palace fountains to cuff-links. Nor did FX ever make any distinction between architecture, sculpture, furniture, jewellery, monuments and bibelots, it was all his work and he could not care less how others might care to categorise whatever he had created.

There were no hierarchies in the world of Les Lalanne, their own work was in the creation of whatever they so wished, not in naming, defining or judging how it should be perceived. But FX was well aware himself of the historical importance of his artist colleagues, late in his career he created a fountain named in homage to Brancusi and also paid his respects to both him and Max Ernst in creating La Genie de Bellerive, a sort of Brancusi column with a version of an Ernst creature perched on top, like a gathering of friends.

Though FX had never lacked for commissions or celebrated collectors and clients, the reputations of Les Lalanne really shifted from a high-society cult into worldwide renown after the success of the Yves St Laurent and Pierre Bergé sale held at Christie's in Paris in February 2009.

This sale marked a distinctive break in the fortunes of Les Lalanne, dividing their early supporters and devotees from the equally rich and famous later converts who, like many converts, were all the more devout. At this sale the results proved unprecedented and altogether dizzying, including $3.5 million for the bar which FX had created for St Laurent himself. And after that the prices just kept on mounting, in 2017 one of FX's finest works, Les Autruches bar (1967-70) from the Jacques Grange collection selling for a total of 6.2 million euros.

But sadly François-Xavier himself was not there to witness such late blooming glory, for he had died just three months before the YSL sale, on the 7th December 2008 at the entirely respectable age of 81. He was at home in his belovèd Ury and left behind a grieving international fan club of admirers, collectors, dealers and devotees, not to mention his daughter Dorothée and widow Claude, who happily lived on for another remarkable and rewarding decade during which the reputation of her husband and herself continued to soar along with their prices. He also left behind a beautiful house and garden full of his works and a remarkable artistic legacy stretching back to art school in 1948, a very full sixty years of constant creativity.

For of course, like any such true artist or artisan, issues of wealth or fame, prices or reputation, could not have meant less to this most sophisticated yet paradoxically simple of craftsmen. As François-Xavier put it himself, "Sometimes I'm asked what I am trying to express. Why, nothing at all! I simply make things because I enjoy making them. Perhaps it's just a way to recover what was once so prettily termed the 'ineffable', precisely that which has no need for words."

By Adrian Dannatt
Author of Francois-Xavier & Claude Lalanne: In the Domain of Dreams

New Orleans Auction Galleries would like to thank Adrian Dannatt for contributing the note for this lot.


palladium leaf over gilt patinated bronze and glass top
monogrammed FXL, stamped LALANNE, dated 2009 and numbered 5/8.

h. 29", w. 41-3/8", l. 82-3/4"

  • Provenance: Galerie Mitterrand, Paris, acquired directly from the artist's studio, 2009 by
    Dr. Nia Terezakis, New Orleans, Louisiana with assistance from Gay Wirth, Wirthmore Antiques, New Orleans, Louisiana.
  • Notes: Premium Lot: You must be pre-approved to bid on this lot. Please contact New Orleans Auction Galleries for more information.

    "Animals have always fascinated me, perhaps because they are the only beings through whom one can enter into another world." Thus Francois-Xavier Lalanne summed up his lifelong fascination with every sort of animal, the principal if not exclusive subject of his exceptional oeuvre.

    And to enter into Lalanne's own 'other world' is indeed to find oneself in a magical domain filled with mythical figures whether from Ancient Greek legend or modern celebrity; for Francois-Xavier (or FX as he was oft known), educated by the Jesuits, was as at home with classical literature as the most modish elite, his frame of reference spanning everything from Aeschylus and Ovid to such close friends as Yves St Laurent, the De Menils, Valentino and Marc Jacobs.

    His work was imbued with this animistic spirit of the ancient world, he would often mention the time he spent as a guard at the Louvre where he was in charge of the Apis bull, but it was also part of the Surrealist legacy, of such friends as Max Ernst and Magritte. Thus that opening citation on animals continues in a pleasingly Surreal mood, "Otherwise one is stuck in the human world, in one's own image, like a man ceaselessly pacing in a house lined with mirrors, finding nothing but his own reflection."

    Of course the reputation and career of FX was intimately linked to that of his wife, the fellow-sculptor Claude Lalanne, for from their very first exhibition they had termed themselves as a creative team, 'Les Lalanne', grammatically confusing in French but absolutely logical in every other respect. But though consistently sharing a name and adjoining studios their work was notably, easily identifiably, different and they only actually collaborated on a handful of works together.

    FX was born in Angers in 1927 to a family that had made its fortune, appropriately enough, in cow bone fertiliser, whilst his father drove the sleekest racing cars, and one could conjour his own aesthetic genealogy from these elements, animal anatomy and modernist engineering, bodywork. After studying painting at l'Academie Julian, where he won first prize as the most promising student of his year, FX began working as an architectural draughtsman for a firm associated with Le Corbusier.

    Indeed he continued with such drawings, as technical as creative, throughout his career. "It's true that when I sculpt animals I always begin with a drawing in profile, the most obvious way to get a grasp on their volume." And though he abandoned painting after one successful solo exhibition he later created some memorable coloured drawings and prints, "often, on air planes, I sketch whatever comes into my head in little notebooks."

    He met Claude at the vernissage of this solo show at the Cimaise gallery in 1952 and soon they were living together at the Impasse Ronsin, an infamously bohemian cul-de-sac in Montparnasse, altogether rudimentary if not rustic with one shared lavatory and only an old wood stove for heat. But here their immediate neighbour and friend was none other than Constantin Brançusi, perhaps the greatest sculptor of the 20th century. Their immediate contemporaries included such young artists as Jean Tinguely and Nikki de St Phalle as well as Americans such as William Copley and the sculptor James Metcalf.

    The Impasse had been an artists colony since 1870 and curiously two of its more celebrated earlier residents had been famous American 'animalier' sculptors; Eli Harvey whose work was particularly loved by Teddy Roosevelt, who had his elk on his White House desk, and Alexander Phimister Proctor whose fabled pumas that guard the entrance to Prospect Park in Brooklyn were actually designed at the Impasse in Paris. There is an obvious continuity between such work and Les Lalanne who managed, almost single or doubly handed, to keep that whole 'animalier' tradition alive well into the 21st century.

    Whilst at the Impasse the young Lalannes were working together as window decorators and set designers, whether for the renowned couturier Christian Dior or choreographer Maurice Béjart. It was only with their first show at the celebrated gallery of Alexandre Iolas in Paris, that they really began those distinctive separate sculptural careers with which they would become so renowned.

    It was also here that FX first came to prominence with his 'moutons', life-sized sheep that served as chairs and benches that were soon to be seen flocking together in every fashionable chateau and palace. The first such grouping of sheep were originally titled Pour Polypheme, a typical FX classical reference to the monster Polyphemus from the Odyssey. These sheep were an immediate success, critically and commercially, and still remain undoubtably the best known work by Les Lalanne.

    This Iolas show in Paris travelled to America but now as an augmented museum exhibition - an immediate coup - at the Art Institute of Chicago, where it received a great deal of attention including a whole article in LIFE magazine. With the beginnings of such success they moved from the ramshackle Impasse Ronsin to find themselves in their own self-created paradise, a series of interlinked farmhouses and gardens in the village of Ury, outside of Fontainebleau.

    Here Les Lalanne maintained their separate studios as well as a vibrant social life, hosting some of the most soigne soirees of that entire 1970s Parisian high-fashion scene which has now entered into legend. 'Ury' became a code word amongst a certain set of international beau mond e, a name to be dropped amongst the highest of haute bohemia and crustiest of gratin; for here one could sit on a 'Mouton' sipping 'Mouton' with an actual Rothschild Baron.

    But whilst Les Lalanne were undoubtably good with the preposterously grand and eye wateringly wealthy they were also at their happiest just working every day in the studio and labouring in their gardens for as long as they could. To quote FX, "A house like this shelters all kinds of inhabitants, of which humans are only one, all sharing the same roof, yet each with its completely separate concerns and time scales. A swallow, for example, which spends six months at Ury nesting, will then take off for Aswan or Ouarzazate."

    Certainly his own works took off for equally exotic parts, whether his grasshopper bar that was presented to the Duke of Edinburgh by President Pompidou, and still resides in the Royal Collection, his topiary dinos in Santa Monica, his poolside bird-chairs at the Frederick Weisman Art Foundation in Holmby Hills or some giant hippo hidden in a private Chinese collection

    Over a fifty year career FX devoted himself to constant work, hardly a day was spent outside the studio, as a sculptor who worked on every imaginable scale, from the design of a house to public art projects, from palace fountains to cuff-links. Nor did FX ever make any distinction between architecture, sculpture, furniture, jewellery, monuments and bibelots, it was all his work and he could not care less how others might care to categorise whatever he had created.

    There were no hierarchies in the world of Les Lalanne, their own work was in the creation of whatever they so wished, not in naming, defining or judging how it should be perceived. But FX was well aware himself of the historical importance of his artist colleagues, late in his career he created a fountain named in homage to Brancusi and also paid his respects to both him and Max Ernst in creating La Genie de Bellerive, a sort of Brancusi column with a version of an Ernst creature perched on top, like a gathering of friends.

    Though FX had never lacked for commissions or celebrated collectors and clients, the reputations of Les Lalanne really shifted from a high-society cult into worldwide renown after the success of the Yves St Laurent and Pierre Bergé sale held at Christie's in Paris in February 2009.

    This sale marked a distinctive break in the fortunes of Les Lalanne, dividing their early supporters and devotees from the equally rich and famous later converts who, like many converts, were all the more devout. At this sale the results proved unprecedented and altogether dizzying, including $3.5 million for the bar which FX had created for St Laurent himself. And after that the prices just kept on mounting, in 2017 one of FX's finest works, Les Autruches bar (1967-70) from the Jacques Grange collection selling for a total of 6.2 million euros.

    But sadly François-Xavier himself was not there to witness such late blooming glory, for he had died just three months before the YSL sale, on the 7th December 2008 at the entirely respectable age of 81. He was at home in his belovèd Ury and left behind a grieving international fan club of admirers, collectors, dealers and devotees, not to mention his daughter Dorothée and widow Claude, who happily lived on for another remarkable and rewarding decade during which the reputation of her husband and herself continued to soar along with their prices. He also left behind a beautiful house and garden full of his works and a remarkable artistic legacy stretching back to art school in 1948, a very full sixty years of constant creativity.

    For of course, like any such true artist or artisan, issues of wealth or fame, prices or reputation, could not have meant less to this most sophisticated yet paradoxically simple of craftsmen. As François-Xavier put it himself, "Sometimes I'm asked what I am trying to express. Why, nothing at all! I simply make things because I enjoy making them. Perhaps it's just a way to recover what was once so prettily termed the 'ineffable', precisely that which has no need for words."

    By Adrian Dannatt
    Author of Francois-Xavier & Claude Lalanne: In the Domain of Dreams

    New Orleans Auction Galleries would like to thank Adrian Dannatt for contributing the note for this lot.


  • Condition: **No evidence of any damage or repairs. The plate glass top has slight surface abrasions as expected with use. The later applied palladium leaf finish has light wear from rubbing, exposing traces of the gilt patinated bronze beneath, giving the table a very pleasing presentation.
    PLEASE NOTE THE HEIGHT MEASUREMENT IS 29".

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$50 $99 $10
$100 $499 $25
$500 $999 $50
$1,000 $1,999 $100
$2,000 $4,999 $200
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$10,000 $14,999 $500
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