Paul Moreau-Vauthier

Noted French sculptor Paul Moreau-Vauthier died in 1936 in a car accident. He studied sculpture first with his father Augustin (1831-1893) and subsequently at the École des Beaux Arts. His brother Charles (1857-1924) was also well-known as a painter and art critic. Paul was appointed a Knight of the Legion d’Honneur in 1910, later to become an Officer. At that time, he had turned away from classical naturalism and turned to new fluid forms. Her was a veteran of the Battle of Verdun in World War I, a fact that highly influenced his work. He became best known for his memorial wall of the Victimes des révolutions (Mur des Fédérés) on Avenue Gambetta in Paris. Paul Moreau-Vauthier also produced a series of sculpted stones with side decorations of infantryman’s gear such as water bottles and hand grenades along the 650 km front from Nieuwpoort, Belgium through Moosch, near Altkirch, and on to the Franco-Swiss border. Between 1921 and 1927, 118 of the planned 240 war monuments were completed. In the 1920s he took over the forms of Art Deco.

Around 1909 Moreau-Vauthier created a series of small (15-20 cm high) bronze statuettes of figures of Spanish folklore, including two bullfighters. Which of them he entered in 1932 is not known. In 1910 another series of small bronzes was created on the motif of Boxers. There were probably three different characters entered from this series.