Aristide Maillol

French, 1861-1944

La Nuit (Night)

© Estate of Aristide Maillol / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Image downloads are for educational use only. For all other purposes, please see our Obtaining and Using Images page.

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© Estate of Aristide Maillol / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Image downloads are for educational use only. For all other purposes, please see our Obtaining and Using Images page.

© Estate of Aristide Maillol / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Image downloads are for educational use only. For all other purposes, please see our Obtaining and Using Images page.

© Estate of Aristide Maillol / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Image downloads are for educational use only. For all other purposes, please see our Obtaining and Using Images page.

© Estate of Aristide Maillol / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Image downloads are for educational use only. For all other purposes, please see our Obtaining and Using Images page.

© Estate of Aristide Maillol / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Image downloads are for educational use only. For all other purposes, please see our Obtaining and Using Images page.

© Estate of Aristide Maillol / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Image downloads are for educational use only. For all other purposes, please see our Obtaining and Using Images page.

La Nuit (Night), 1902-1909 (cast executed 1939)

Artwork Details

Currently on View

Materials

lead

Edition:

1/6

Measurements

overall: 41 1/2 x 24 x 43 1/2 inches (105.41 x 60.96 x 110.49 cm)

Collection Buffalo AKG Art Museum

Credit

James G. Forsyth Fund, 1939

Accession ID

1939:10.1

Night is the result of Aristide Maillol’s interpretation of the somber and heavy eighteenth-century sculptures he encountered in the gardens of Versailles outside of Paris. It is composed of a series of lines that both represent a figure and evoke the shape of a cube. The model for this work was the artist’s wife. Her pose is simultaneously brooding and powerful. In 1909, upon viewing an earlier cast of Night in an exhibition, sculptor Auguste Rodin remarked, “One forgets too easily that the human body is an architecture, a living architecture.”

Label from Picasso: The Artist and His Models, November 5, 2016–February 19, 2017

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