Aristide Maillol

Beginning as a tapestry maker and Nabis painter, Maillol turned to sculpture at age forty when severe eye disease forced him to abandon tapestry looms. In 1905, his plaster sculpture La Méditerranée debuted at the Salon d'Automne, praised by André Gide for its noble calm and architectural stability.

Maillol sculpted smooth, full-figured marble and bronze allegories of nature, night, and rivers (L'Air, Le Fleuve, L'Harmonie), modeling his late works on his muse Dina Vierny. In 1964, André Malraux installed eighteen of Maillol's monumental bronze statues in the Tuileries Gardens in Paris.