Thomas François Cartier

THOMAS FRANÇOIS CARTIER (France, 1879 - 1943).
"Erotic Tango of Pierrot and Columbine", Art Deco, ca. 1925.
Patinated bronze and Portoro marble base.
Signed.
Measurements: 31 x 38 x 20 cm (sculpture); 4.5 x 32.5 x 12.5 cm (base).

The "Erotic Tango" in tender is characterized by an elegant, stylized and very dynamic representation of the human body, where the important thing is not so much the anatomical realism as the line, the rhythm and the sensuality of the movement. Thomas Cartier shows the couple in a frozen but fluid pose - twists, tilts, long strides or intertwined figures - conveying tension and connection between the bodies.

Thomas François Cartier was a sculptor specializing in animalistic sculpture, born in Marseille and trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he was a disciple of renowned masters of the academic tradition. He developed a career focused almost exclusively on the representation of animals -especially felines, dogs, horses and wildlife- with a naturalistic style but endowed with great expressive force and sense of movement, in which both the anatomical study and the capture of the character and tension of the animals are appreciated; he worked mainly in bronze and exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français, where he gained recognition, establishing himself as one of the most prominent French animal sculptors of the first half of the twentieth century, highly valued today in the decorative art and sculpture market.