MORE THAN 35 YEARS AT THE SERVICE OF THE EXQUISITE COLLECTOR, FOR WHOM I THANK.

FRENCH BRONZE MEDAL

HENRY BAZIN PORTRAIT

Henri-Émile Bazin, (born Jan. 10, 1829, Nancy, France—died Feb. 7, 1917, Dijon), engineer and member of the French Corps des Ponts et Chaussées (“Corps of Bridges and Highways”) whose contributions to hydraulics and fluid mechanics include the classic study of water flow in open channels.

Bazin worked as an assistant to the noted hydraulic engineer H.-P.-G. Darcy (1803–58), whose program of tests on resistance to water flow in channels Bazin finished after Darcy died. The results were published in 1865.

Bazin then carried his study over into the problem of wave propagation and the contraction of fluid flowing through an orifice. In 1854 he enlarged the Canal de Bourgogne and made it profitable for commercial navigation. In 1867 he suggested the use of pumps for dredging rivers, leading to the construction of the first suction dredgers.

Bazin became chief engineer of the Corps des Ponts et Chaussées in 1875 and was placed in charge of the Bourgogne canal system; he became inspector general in 1886. He retired in 1900 and was elected to the French Academy of Sciences in 1913.

SIGNED BY THE MASTER SCULPTOR OVIDE YENCESSE

The last son of a family of butchers in Dijon, Ovide Yencesse was destined by his parents for the priesthood. But he was bored at the Petit-Séminaire de Plombières-lès-Dijon. After the death of his father (1879), he continued his education with Father Viennot, parish priest of Braux, who detected his artistic talent, prompting him to attend the School of Fine Arts in Dijon in parallel with training in jewelry. and goldsmith's work that he undertook. He took a passion for sculpture, has Henri Bouchard as a comrade, and falls in love with a young painter, Marie Chapuis, whom he will marry in 1897. They will have four children: Geneviève, Hubert, Jacques and Pierre. His predilection first went to religious sculpture and medals (first communion plaque, etc.). In 1891, he moved to Paris to complete his training at the National School of Fine Arts with G.-J. Thomas, Ferdinand Levillain, and above all the medalist Hubert Ponscarme whose opinions and advice made him definitely opt for engraving as a medal. He failed the Prix de Rome competition twice in 1893 and 1896.

His career having already been launched, and his talent noticed by the critics, the very influential Roger Marx found that he brought a “new thrill” to the medal, by introducing an impressionist rendering. "It is an art of intimacy, of social compassion, resolutely modern," he wrote in an article from 1902. The distinctive qualities of Mr. Yencesse's talent are penetration, tenderness. In his compositions, his portraits, he manages to touch us in the depths of the soul, by the sobriety of the staging, by the elimination of details; he generalizes the accidental and thus elevates to symbol any spectacle taken around him. The very particular invoice also contributes to increasing the confusion into which these images throw us; the reliefs barely emerge from the field of the medal, the half-light envelops all parts of the whole, as in the paintings of Eugène Carrière. Never has it been better made known what close relations unite glyptics and painting. This very particular style, which its founder A. Liard knew perfectly well how to translate, earned him, by allusion to Eugène Carrière's painting, the nickname" Carrière de la médaille ".

At the 1900 Universal Exhibition in Paris, he obtained a gold medal and the Legion of Honor (decree of December 14, 1900).

Among his works of these years, let us quote the portraits of Spuller (1895) and of some other Burgundian parliamentarians, of his master Ponscarme (1903), of Berlioz (1903), of Wagner (1904), the double portrait (from life ) of Pierre and Marie Curie (1904), the portrait of Pierre Curie (posthumous homage, 1907).

Even more than the portraits, it is the brochures devoted to peasant life and intimate scenes that have marked contemporaries and still mark by their originality, especially in craftsmanship. In the first category, let us quote: Le Semeur (1897), Pierrette la Pauvre, Virginie la Sage, Annette la Folle (three old Burgundian peasants from Saint-Mesmin, 1897), François le Rémouleur, the churning machine of the Le Beurre wafer, etc. In the second category: the Mother's Kiss, the Child's Kiss, Child's Caress, Manette / Minette, Le Tub, L'Étude, l'Enfant aux roses, etc. all inspired by his family life. He also produced a few brochures for official events, for the Exhibition of Decorative Arts in Milan in 1906, for the Universal Exhibition in Brussels in 1910 or even The Kiss of Peace (after Eugène Carrière) for the International Conciliation Society. (1907).

He also created some jewelry and decorative art objects (La Fumée, cigarette case, and La Flamme, matchbox in 1902).

Returned to Dijon in 1906, he later turned out to be less creative, taking up the same subjects in a more “robust” but less typical style. Moreover, the craze for the medal through the development of the decorative arts at the turn of the 1900s withered away, and the dissemination of his work was no longer sufficient, after the First World War, to ensure him sufficient income.

In 1919, he took over from Max Blondat as director of the Dijon School of Fine Arts, where he also trained his sons, Hubert and Jacques, in sculpture. He remained there until 1934, and was replaced by Pierre Vigoureux. He then resumed his medalist activity. Among his last works, let us quote the portraits of Marie Curie (posthumous homage, 1934) and of her friend François Pompon (1936).

OBV.: PORTRAIT

REV.: WORKS OF ENGINEERING THAT HE DIRECTED.

PLAIN EDGE WITH HALLMARK "BRONZ" AND TRIANGLE.

Diam.: 40.1mm. - Weight.: 27.9grams.

EXCELLENT CONDITION

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