Woman's torso

Over the course of her career, Jeanne Bardey produced around 600 sculptures and 2,000 drawings, engravings and paintings. Born in Lyon in 1872 into a well-off family, she began drawing at the age of 30 with her husband, the decorative painter Louis Bardey. She moved to Paris in 1907 to perfect her art, where she met Auguste Rodin, who admired her sketches. She became his pupil and last confidante. This powerful female torso, curiously cut at the arms and legs, is part of the panorama of sculpted female torsos of the early 20th century. After Rodin’s sculptures of torsos, many of them have been produced by artists such as Antoine Bourdelle and Aristide Maillol. The closed gaze of this realistic female figure, sculpted after a live model, gives the work a strange aura of silence, restraint and introspection.