FRENCH SCULPTURE CENSUS / RÉPERTOIRE DE SCULPTURE FRANÇAISE CLODION, Claude MICHEL, called Nancy, Meurthe-et-Moselle 1738 - Paris 1814 Le Fleuve du Rhin séparant les eaux River God (The River Rhine Separating the Waters) 1765 terracotta statuette 1 12 ?8 x 18 in. signed and dated at the back of the rock: Clodion. / 1765 Acc. No.: 1989.17 Credit Line: Museum purchase, Gift of Various Donors by Exchange and Whitney Warren Jr. Bequest Fund in memory of Mrs. Alma de Bretteville Spreckels Photo credit: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco © Artist : San Francisco, California, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Legion of Honor legionofhonor.famsf.org Provenance 1987, December 18, sale, Paris, Ader-Picard-Tajan, p. 16, no. 122, repr. 1989, London, art market 1989, Museum purchase, Gift of Various Donors by Exchange and Whitney Warren Jr. Bequest Fund in memory of Mrs. Alma de Bretteville Spreckels Bibliography 1992 Poulet and Scherf Anne L. Poulet and Guilhem Scherf, Clodion, 1738-1814, Paris, Musée du Louvre, 1992, p. 125- 128 Related works Other copies at the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, and at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Comment Museum's text, September 2012: Claude Michel, known as Clodion, was one of the most creative and technically gifted French sculptors of the second half of the 18th century. Trained in the exuberant style of the Roman Baroque, he developed a sculptural language of broad, spontaneous modeling and decorative vigor also associated with the contemporary Rococo style. A skillful modeler of clay, he created a new genre in sculpture, the terracotta statuette, whose subjects were often mythological, focusing on themes of gods, nymphs, satyrs, and beautiful youths. This representation of the river god was created relatively early in Clodion's career when he was influenced by the style of ancient Rome and its Baroque reinterpretations. The muscular, heroic body of the river god and the composition's powerful, horizontal thrust reveal Clodion's response to these traditions, while the delicate, spirited modeling shows an 18th-century sensibility. The sculpture was probably intended as a model for a fountain.