After Russian Sculptor Eugene Alexandrovich Lanceray (1848-1886) Circa 1871, Large Patinated Bronze Seated Bear

A bronze sculpture of a seated bear with a brown patina – upon a grey mottled marble base.  Signed in Russian cyrillic on base.

Evgeni Alexandrovich Lanceray (Eugène Lanseré), was a Russian sculptor (1848-1886). He was the grandson of French ancestry, Major Paul Lanseré of the Napoleonic army, who was wounded and captured at the Battle of Borodino (1812) and decided to remain in Russia, where he married the daughter of the governor of Vilna. Lanceray studied at the local grammar school in his native town of Morshansk in Tambov Province. In 1861 he moved with his family to St Petersburg where he visited the studios of Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky and Baron Pyotr Klodt von Jurgensburg and was awarded a gold watch for a statuette by the future Tsar Alexander III (1866).

He travelled widely across Russia, Bashkiria, Kirghizia, Ukraine and the Caucasus, observing tribesmen and their animals. He sculpted around four hundred works on historical, ethnographic and genre themes. He cast works in bronze using the lost-wax method in foundries owned by Félix Chopin, Adolphe Moran and other Frenchmen in St Petersburg and in iron at foundries at Kasli in the Ural Mountains. He visited France (1867, 1876) and Algeria (1883).Lanceray was awarded the titles of second-class artist (1869), first-class artist (1872) and honorary fellow of the Imperial Academy of Arts (1876). The work of the sculptor is represented in many Museum and private collections, including the State Tretyakov gallery, State Russian Museum, Pushkin Museum. A. S. Pushkin, the National Museum “Kiev art gallery” (formerly Kiev Museum of Russian art), numerous private collections in Russia, China, USA and Europe. Signed on the base in Cyrillic, the bear is seated on haunches with brown patina on a marble base.

Dimensions: height 10″ x diameter of base 7.25″