Le Décor | 5 Famous French Sculptures For Your Home
If you’ve been craving a museum trip, but would rather not leave the house right now to visit priceless works of art—or better yet, if you’ve ever wished you could make your home a gallery exhibit of its very own, then today is your lucky day.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art—better known as The Met—offers replicas of the renowned works of some of France’s most prolific sculptors, including Edgar Degas and Auguste Rodin, right in the museum gift shop—and they’re more affordable than you’d think!
The best news of all is that you don’t have to take a trip to New York City to do your shopping. Take home some of the most celebrated artworks of the Renaissance period, available for purchase below via The Met Store online.
Choose your favorite below, or even turn your maison into your very own private collection.
5 Famous French Sculptures For Your Home
The Thinker; Rodin $225 ($202.50 for members)
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“Our scaled reproduction in hand-patinated bonded bronze was scanned from a bronze of The Thinker in The Met collection, which was cast about 1910 from an original 19th-century model by Auguste Rodin (French, 1840–1917). Rodin's first government commission was for a monumental portal covered with sculptural reliefs for a Paris museum. He proposed a vast composition based loosely on Dante's Divine Comedy, but the work remained unfinished. The artist later began to extract individual figures from the reliefs and enlarge them to create freestanding sculptures. In its original position, The Thinker was at the center of the portal's lintel. The detached, brooding figure has been invested with multiple meanings—poet, judge, sculptor.”
Dancer; Degas $350 ($315 for members)
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“The Museum's sculpture is directly reproduced from a bronze cast made in 1920 after the death of Impressionist artist Edgar Degas (French, 1834–1917), who made the original mold.”
Adam & Eve; Rodin $395 each ($355 for members)
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“The Museum's Eve was cast in bronze in 1910 from Auguste Rodin's (French, 1840–1917) original 1881 model. Based on this work, our reduced-scale reproduction was created with a combination of three-dimensional imaging and traditional sculpture techniques.”
Little Dancer; Degas $95 ($85.50 for members)
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“The beloved bronze adaptation of this famous work in The Met collection was cast in 1922. This resin statuette is dressed in fabric and stands on a wooden base; it will provide an artistic flourish among your decor or in a child's room. For his sculpture, as well as for his painting, Degas found a ready source of inspiration in the ballet dancers of the Paris Opéra. The original sculpture, modeled after dancer Marie van Goethem, is one of several that he formed in various positions allowing him to explore the subtle variations in the dynamics of movement and of tension within the human figure.”
Bather; Degas $495 ($445.50 for members)
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“Our beautiful sculpture celebrates a direct lineage to the work of Edgar Degas (French, 1834–1917). It was carefully reproduced from a 1920 bronze in the Met's collection, which itself was cast from an original figure modeled about 1888–92 by the artist's own hand, one of 150 small-scale sculptures of wax, clay, and plastiline found in his studio after his death. Degas created these small figures as a private means of exploring subjects that fascinated him while investigating the movement of the body, as seen in this evocative bather, stretching an arm to sponge her back.”
Hand of God; Rodin $395 ($355.50 for members)
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“Auguste Rodin (French, 1840–1917) was fascinated by the expressive possibilities of hands. A deeply sensitive sculpture, The Hand of Godrepresents divine creation, the life-giving hand symbolizing both the Creator and the sculptor. There are numerous versions of this masterwork by Rodin in both marble and bronze. Our faithful reproduction is based on a marble commissioned from Rodin in 1906 by a Met trustee.”
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