Claire Jeanne Roberte Colinet

CLAIRE JEANNE ROBERTE COLINET (Brussels, 1880-1950).
"Dancers", c. 1920.
Patinated bronze and marble pedestal with gilded bronze appliques.
Work reproduced in: Catley. B., "Art Deco and other figures". Antique Collectors' Club Ltd, 1884.
Signed.
Measurements: 52.5 x 28 x 27 cm.
Patinated bronze sculpture depicting two nude female figures in a harmonious, flowing dance. Both women are intertwined with their arms raised, generating a dynamic composition, balanced and full of vitality. The spiraling movement of their bodies, reinforced by the open postures and the faces raised with jubilant expression, suggests a celebration of youth, freedom and the idealized beauty of the human body.
The sculpture stands on an octagonal base of veined marble in reddish and pinkish tones, decorated with gilded bronze reliefs evoking mythological or pastoral scenes, adding a narrative dimension that connects the work to the traditions of classical art.
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 in-depth research has been conducted 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.