Lot 0012
Le Devoir’ by Emile Louis Picault (1833-1915)
Estimate: 5000-6000€
Émile Louis Picault (1833–1915)
Le Devoir (Duty)
France, late 19th century
Patinated bronze, signed “E. Picault” on base, with stamp “Réduction Mécanique A. Collas”
Height: 77 cm
This finely cast bronze by Émile Louis Picault represents Le Devoir — “Duty” — a classical warrior symbolizing civic virtue, courage, and moral steadfastness. The figure stands poised, holding a sword, embodying the ideals of honor and devotion to one’s homeland. The work’s dynamic realism and noble restraint exemplify the heroic allegorical style that made Picault one of the most admired sculptors of the French Third Republic.
Cast with Picault’s characteristic attention to anatomy and drapery, the sculpture bears the mechanical reduction stamp of A. Collas, referring to Achille Collas’s innovative 19th-century process for creating precise scaled reductions of large bronzes.
Émile Louis Picault trained under the Dutch sculptor Louis Royer and exhibited extensively at the Paris Salon between 1863 and 1909. His works often depicted allegorical, patriotic, and mythological subjects — celebrating labor, honor, knowledge, and heroism.
Starting price: 4000€
Estimate: 5000-6000€
Hammer Price: UNSOLD€
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Lot 0011
Evgeny Lanceray. “Peasant Woman with Cattle and Dog”
Estimate: 10000-12000€
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Estimate: 10000-12000€Evgeny Lanceray. Peasant Woman with Cattle and Dog
Model 1873
Bronze, casting, assembly, patination
27.5 × 26 × 23.5 cm
Petersburg, late 19th – early 20th century
Signature along the base: “E. Lanceray”, cast by C. BertoThis rare bronze group, created by Evgeny Lanceray in 1873, portrays a peasant woman guiding cattle, accompanied by a dog. It combines lively movement with careful attention to costume and detail, reflecting Lanceray’s interest in everyday Russian life and ethnographic themes.
Evgeny Alexandrovich Lanceray (1848–1886)
Born in Morshansk, Tambov province, into a French family that had settled in Russia, Lanceray was the son of a railway engineer. He studied law at St. Petersburg University but received no formal artistic training, instead learning sculpture independently and working from life. He visited workshops of established sculptors, including Nikolai Liberich, and undertook study trips to Paris in 1867 and 1876, where he studied bronze casting and became acquainted with European art.Lanceray traveled widely across Russia, Ukraine, the Caucasus, the Crimea, Bashkiria, and Kyrgyz lands, and in 1883 visited Algeria. His wax models, later cast in bronze, gained great popularity. Many of his works carried strong national, historical, or ethnographic character, and he also created pieces devoted to the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878. In addition, he designed table services and desk sets.
In 1869 he was awarded the title of “Class Artist, 2nd degree” by the Imperial Academy of Arts, and in 1872 achieved the 1st degree. In 1874 he became an honorary free associate of the Academy, and from 1879 he was a member of the Moscow Society of Art Lovers.
A master of narrative plastic miniatures, Lanceray brought international recognition to Russian sculpture. His works were shown at the World’s Fairs in London (1872), Vienna (1873), Paris (1873), Antwerp (1885), and other cities. His bronzes were cast at all major Russian foundries and by private firms such as Chopin, Stange, Moran, and Berto, as well as at Ural ironworks. Today his works are preserved in the State Russian Museum, the Tretyakov Gallery, and other major collections. Karl Berto (Charles Auguste Bertault) Foundry. Studied under Barbedienne, Paris.
Period: 1889 – 1903.
In 1889 – 1890 the products were marked as Chopin & Berto.
Felix Chopin’s foundry has been passed over to Karl Berto in around 1890.
Starting price: 8000€
Estimate: 10000-12000€
Hammer Price: 12000€ -
Lot 0010
Evgeny Lanceray. Pair of Russian Bronze Candlesticks
Estimate: 1000-1500€
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Estimate: 1000-1500€Evgeny Lanceray. Ice Cream Vendor and Fish Seller (from the series of Russian Types)
Bronze candlesticks. Dimensions: H. 19.5 cm and 18.5 cm
Russia, late 19th centuryThese two bronze candlesticks depict lively figures of a fish seller and an ice cream vendor, part of Evgeny Lanceray’s celebrated series of Russian tipazhi (types). Each figure balances a tub on his head, transformed into a functional candleholder.
The candlesticks originally belonged to a larger desk set created in the mid-1870s, consisting of around thirty small figures that served as match holders, ashtrays, candlesticks, a bell, a paper press, and other objects. Thematically, the set reflects the broader trend of Russian art at the time—its fascination with folk life and everyday characters. The artistic roots of this approach go back to the famous 1817 publication The Magic Lantern, or a Display of St. Petersburg Street Vendors, Artisans and Other Common Tradesmen, Depicted True to Life in Their Dress and Shown in Conversation.
The desk set was repeatedly cast at the F. Chopin foundry in St. Petersburg. While a complete example has not survived, individual pieces are now preserved in the collections of the State Historical Museum (Moscow) and the State Russian Museum (St. Petersburg). For further reference see: L. N. Goncharova, Russian Artistic Bronze of the 19th Century, Moscow, 2001, pp. 67–68, 112.
Starting price: 800€
Estimate: 1000-1500€
Hammer Price: 1300€ -
Lot 0014
Miniature Bronze Sculpture Depicting a Wild Boar
Estimate: 150-200€
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Estimate: 150-200€A miniature bronze sculpture depicting a wild boar, set on a stone base. The overall dimensions, including the stand, measure 15 x 10 cm.
Starting price: 100€
Estimate: 150-200€
Hammer Price: UNSOLD€ -
Lot 0013
Evgeny Lanceray. Russian bronze composition “Little Kyrgyz or Bashkir the herdsman”
Estimate: 2000-3000€
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Estimate: 2000-3000€Evgeny Lanceray. Little Kyrgyz (or Bashkir Herdsman)
Model 1879
Bronze. Dimensions: 19 × 23 × 10 cm
St. Petersburg, late 19th centuryThis bronze composition by Evgeny Lanceray represents a mounted Bashkir herdsman, shown in dynamic motion, holding a lasso in his hand. The work belongs to Lanceray’s celebrated ethnographic series, inspired by his extensive travels across Russia and its borderlands.
The model was created in 1879 but reflects impressions from an earlier journey to Bashkiria in the early 1870s. Like many of Lanceray’s works, The Bashkir Herdsman combines vivid ethnographic detail with the sculptor’s gift for narrative and movement, making it one of his best-known works of small-scale realist sculpture.
During the sculptor’s lifetime and in the late 19th century, the composition was cast at the Chopin and Shtange foundries in St. Petersburg. In the early 20th century, it was also reproduced without foundry marks, both by large firms such as the Moscow workshop of A. M. Postnikov and by smaller private foundries in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Starting price: 1500€
Estimate: 2000-3000€
Hammer Price: UNSOLD€