The Madonna by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska

One of the few paintings by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska joins the artist's reference collection, assembled from the 1956 donation by Jim Ede (1895-1990) of part of the studio divided between Orléans, the Musée National d'Art Moderne and Kettle's Yard, Cambridge. "Wild Messiah", "cursed sculptor", "Rimbaud of art": Henri Gaudier-Brzeska's epithets reflect his status as a myth in the history of modern art, even if the artist, who died at the age of 23 during the Battle of Artois on June 5, 1915, is little known to the general public today. After a childhood in Saint-Jean-de-Braye, near Orléans, followed by an itinerant youth in England and Germany, he moved to London in January 1911, where he became a major player in the international avant-garde, close to Ezra Pound and founder of Vorticism in 1913.

La Madone is one of the very few known oil paintings by Gaudier-Brzeska. When he arrived in London in early 1911 with his partner, the Polish Sophie Brzeska, twice his age, after turning his back on France, Henri Gaudier was an aspiring sculptor, self-taught, anarchist and fascinated by African sculpture, which he discovered at the British Museum. His first commission was a plaster cast of the actress Maria Carmi as the Madonna in The Miracle, an internationally successful blockbuster performed at London's Olympia from December 21, 1911 to February 10, 1912. This sculpture (plaster preserved at Kettle's Yard, posthumous cast at MBA Orléans and MNAM), which Gaudier himself describes as a pastiche of Spanish Baroque sculpture, was his first attempt to break away from Rodin's influence. Gaudier's painting of his reflection in a mirror is a testament to his complex relationship with painting, having left over a thousand drawings and pastels in the space of four years.

This painting, acquired from the Philip Mould gallery, will shortly be exhibited in the new cabinet dedicated to Gaudier-Brzeska in the collections.