Claire Jeanne Roberte Colinet

CLAIRE JEANNE ROBERTE COLINET (1880-1950)
"Danse de Carthage", c.1920.
Gilt bronze with onyx base.
Signed.
Measurements: 54.5 x 52 x 22 cm.
Although the Art Deco style statuettes sculpted by Claire Jeanne Roberte Coline during the interwar period such as her Danse de Carthage achieved great popularity, to date, no thorough research has been done on them. As a woman sculptor in the first half of the twentieth century, Colinet had to legitimize herself within a traditionally male field. She achieved this through multiple avenues. In addition to her training in the private workshop of a renowned master, she actively participated in traditionalist-oriented salons, such as those organized by the Union des femmes peintres et sculpteurs, the École française, the municipality of Asnières-sur-Seine and the Salon des artistes français, the latter representing the official art of the time, from which she received an honorary mention in 1914.
She was also appointed Officer of the Academy in 1912 and Officer of Public Instruction in 1924. These institutional distinctions allowed her, on the one hand, to turn some of her sculptures into decorative bronzes thanks to art publishers such as Gustave Leblanc-Barbedienne, Arthur Goldscheider, Edmond Etling and Les Neveux de J. Lehmann, which ensured her a source of income and a wide diffusion of her work. On the other hand, they enabled him to receive several public commissions in the 1930s, including his Allégorie de la Musique [Allegory of Music] of 1935 for the pediment of the administrative and social center of Asnières-sur-Seine.
As for his professionalization as an artist, his choice of signature is also noteworthy: "C(l).J.R.Colinet", free of any conjugal reference, but including the initials of his three names, which underlines a "more explicitly personal authorship". Also relevant is the construction of her social image as an artist, through the dissemination of a photograph - which she and her first husband, Georges Godchaux, used as a greeting card in 1910 - in which she is seen standing in her studio, in full creation, dressed in work clothes and tools in hand.