Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (French, 1891-1915)
Firebird (The Russian Ballet)
signed 'Gaudier/Brzeska' (on the base)
bronze with a brown patina
63 cm. (24 3/4 in.) high
Clay conceived in 1912, this cast from the later bronze edition of 10
Footnotes:
Provenance
Private Collection, U.K.

Exhibited
London, Royal Albert Hall, Allied Artists Association, July 1913, cat.no.1212 (another cast)
London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Twentieth Century Art: A Review of Modern Movements, 8 May-20 June 1914, cat.no.179 (another cast)
London, Leicester Galleries, A Memorial Exhibition of the Work of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, May-June 1918, cat.no.2 (another cast)
London, Mercury Gallery, 1987, cat.no.5 (as L'oiseau de Feu, another cast)

Literature
Harold Stanley Ede, Savage Messiah, William Heinemann, London, 1931, pp.156-57
Horace Brodsky, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Faber and Faber, London, 1932, p.36 (ill., another cast)
Mervyn Levy, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska: Drawings and Sculpture, October House, New York, 1965, pl.73 (ill., another cast)
Roger Cole, Burning to Speak: The Life and Art of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Phaidon Press, Oxford, 1978, cat.no.14
Evelyn Silber and David Finn, Gaudier-Brzeska, Thames and Hudson, London, 1996, cat.no.18 (ill.b&w, another cast)

Soon after his move to London from his birthplace and hometown of Saint-Jean-de-Braye near Orléans, France, in 1912, Gaudier-Brzeska received a commission from Julian Lousada, an avid art collector and friend of the artist. Gaudier-Brzeska was to produce a series of work inspired by the Ballet Russe production of Stravinsky's Firebird, which was to be performed in London for the first time from June to August that year. The work depicts the moment when Prince Ivan Tsarevitch, portrayed by dancer Adolph Bolm, captures the eponymous Firebird, portrayed by Tamara Karsavina.

Gaudier-Brzeska produced two plaster casts from the original clay sculpture. Lousada was given one of the plasters, and paid £20 for a bronze to be cast from it, the highest price ever paid for a work of Gaudier-Brzeska's during his lifetime. This cast was sadly destroyed by bombing during the Blitz, and ten casts were subsequently produced from the surviving plaster.