„(…) avec le droit d’édition“ –

At the auctions “50 Lots – My Choice” on 4 December 2025 and “Modern Art” on 5 December 2025, Kunsthaus Lempertz will be offering thirteen outstanding sculptures by Aristide Maillol (1861-1944). These bronzes are exceptional due to the fact that all but two of them are from the first edition, begun around 1902, that the art dealer and publisher Ambroise Vollard (1866-1939) commissioned from the renowned founder Florentin Godard (1877-1957). It was the bronzes cast under his supervision that first helped the sculptor Maillol attain fame, recognition and, finally, important public commissions in Paris, Hagen, Weimar and, later, Moscow. The works up for auction include renowned and rare sculptures like the two extraordinary pieces “Pendule, dite Deux Soeurs” (Lot 6) and “Marteau de porte” (Lot 37) as well as others that are extremely popular among collectors, such as “Baigneuse debout, deuxième version” (Lot 119), “Femme au crabe” (Lot 120) and “Femme accroupie” (Lot 123).

Alongside Auguste Rodin, Aristide Maillol is considered the most important modern French sculptor. Originally from the Mediterranean, near the Spanish border, he initially studied painting in Paris. Around 1900 he drew attention to himself for the first time with his innovative tapestries. As Ursel Berger writes in her foundational text about Maillol at the Galerie Vollard, he was working on small reliefs and figurines in wood or clay around 1898, while supervising the embroidering of his tapestries (Ursel Berger/Élisabeth Lebon, Maillol (re)découvert, sous la direction de Jean-Baptiste Auffret, Paris 2021, pp. 11-28). Introduced by the painter Édouard Vuillard, Vollard met the then largely unknown sculptor during this period. The most important art dealer in Paris immediately recognised Maillol’s potential and offered to have his sculptures professionally cast in bronze and then sell them through his gallery. Vollard writes about these events in his memoirs: “I was at Maillol’s studio when he completed a wooden statuette. A new idea occurred to me: ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to have a bronze cast made of that,” I asked him. ‘A bronze cast?’ answered the sculptor. ‘Entrust the figure to me, I’ll take care of everything else.’ Maillol accepted, and so I brought out the first bronze edition, which would be followed by many more pieces” (cited in Berger/Lebon 2021, p. 11).

The first exhibition of Maillol bronzes at the Galerie Vollard in 1902 stands at the beginning of their long and successful collaboration. Featuring 33 pieces, including tapestries, decorative works and early reliefs as well as statuettes in plaster, wood and bronze, it offered an overview of the work he had created up to that time. This presentation immediately made Maillol famous. Vollard closed his first contract with the artist that same year: “Vendu à Monsieur Ambroise Vollard éditeur, 6 rue Lafitte Paris, par Monsieur Aristide Maillol artiste sculpteur les objets suivants en toute propriété et avec le droit d’édition.“ (cited in Berger/Lebon 2021, p. 12). Vollard purchased multiple works from Maillol, simultaneously acquiring the right to create editions of them. A second contract covering an additional “sept statuettes” followed in 1905. Both agreements precisely identify the group of statuettes for which Vollard had purchased the rights. Only these works were allowed to be cast, sold or relicensed, for example, to Alfred Flechtheim in Berlin or Erhard Weyhe in New York.

Vollard had the right to produce editions of a total of 22 Maillol bronzes, and he commissioned the then still-young founder Florentin Godard to produce them in unlimited editions using the sand-casting process. While a few works are from the period before 1900, Maillol created most of the pieces specifically for this edition. As Ursel Berger has shown, Maillol first produced clay versions and then plaster casts. These formed Godard’s models for the bronze casts, which he – as was typical of his workshop – provided with neither a foundry mark nor numbering. Aside from bronzes, Godard also produced terracottas. Vollard is holding one of these statuettes, probably a version of “Femme accroupie”, in his hands in Renoir’s famous portrait of him. Godard was Vollard and Maillol’s favourite founder because he had developed his own style for his bronzes. They were worked in a manner that was neither rough nor particularly delicate; instead, the reduced articulation in their handling of surfaces and their noble patina corresponded most closely to Maillol’s artistic idea. 

90 % of the Maillol-Vollard bronzes were produced by Godard, and the sculptor’s fame was founded on his casts. During Maillol’s own lifetime, it was the early casts of his works that had been making their way into the most important German and French museums since 1905, including the Nationalgalerie Berlin, Kunsthalle Bremen and Musée du Luxembourg, Paris. The same applies to the private collectors Harry Graf Kessler, Karl Ernst Osthaus, Octave Mirbeau, Julius Meier-Graefe, Carl Sternheim and Ivan Abramovich Morozow: all of them owned Maillol bronzes from the Édition Vollard. These bronzes continue to define our image of Maillol’s work today.