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ROUILLAC

48 - B - Antoine Rabany (French, 1844–1919)
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Estimate €40,000 - €60,000
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Description
Antoine Rabany (French, 1844–1919) The Fiancée Volcanic rock. Height 51, width 28, depth 22 cm. Provenance: - Antoine Rabany’s studio, Chambon-sur-Lac (Puy-de-Dôme), visible in a stereoscopic view reproduced by Bruno Montpied; - private collection; - Georges Ousset (1923–2003) collection, bookseller at La Bible d’Or, Toulouse, acquired in the 1960s; - by inheritance, Haute-Garonne. Bibliography: Bruno Montpied, *Les Barbus Müller: leur énigmatique sculpteur enfin démasqué*, Geneva, Barbier-Mueller Museum, 2020, reproduced pp. 36–37, fig. 7. A female ‘Barbu Müller’ in Toulouse Identified as early as 1908 by specialists in Gallic archaeology, the farmer Antoine Rabany, known as ‘le Zouave’, displayed his volcanic stone sculptures next to a hut by the side of a path, on the outskirts of the village of Chambon-sur-Lac, in the Puy-de-Dôme. ‘He made lava figurines for tourists that were absolutely identical to those in the baptistery and the church,’ recalls *L’Auvergnat de Paris* of 3 February 1934. Léon Coutil describes their easily recognisable style in the *Report on the Fourth Session of the French Prehistoric Congress*, published in Chambéry in 1909: “measuring between 20 cm and 40 cm and roughly carved: the eyes are generally very prominent, the limbs very sketchily indicated”. Léon Coutil, who met Rabany, adds: ‘He goes to great lengths to carve them, having absolutely no knowledge of modelling or the techniques involved in working with hard stone’. In Auvergne, the stones used for sculpture are not basalt, which is too hard and reserved for construction. They are trachyte when they are light in colour with flecks, trachyandesite when they are dark with flecks, and, more rarely, rhyolite when the stone is pink. This sculpture, which appears light in colour in an old photograph, has blackened over time and is therefore thought to be trachyte. Léon Coutil points out that these stones, sold for 5 to 10 francs each, were subsequently channelled via the Murol trading hub to Clermont-Ferrand, Évreux or Paris, where they were presented as authentic Romanesque pieces. Art lovers were captivated by them, such as the Parisian dealer and collector Charles Ratton or the philanthropist Albert Barnes in Philadelphia. Pauline Goutain, curator and deputy director of the Roger-Quilliot Art Museum in Clermont-Ferrand, pointed out in a recent exhibition that two of Rabany’s sculptures are held at the Barnes Foundation, having come from the famous art dealer Paul Guillaume, who is said to have shown them to the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, believing them to date from the 9th century. Following Antoine Rabany’s death, his land was sold at auction on 9 December 1928 and he was largely forgotten, until Jean Dubuffet took an interest in these sculptures and, in 1947, dedicated a manifesto-style book published by the Foyer de l’Art Brut to them, entitled ‘Les Barbus Müller et autres pièces de la statuaire provinciale’. He named them the ‘Barbus Müller’ in homage to the Swiss collector Joseph Müller, who had purchased seven of them from a Parisian antique dealer before the war, describing them as ‘stones from the Vendée’. It was not until 2018 that Bruno Montpied once again identified Antoine Rabany as the creator of these sculptures. A summary of the various research projects on the subject was published in 2020 in the catalogue for the Barbier-Mueller Museum exhibition *Les Barbus Müller: their enigmatic sculptor finally unmasked*. Two previously unpublished pairs of stereoscopic views now unequivocally attribute nearly forty sculptures to him, photographed at Chambon-sur-Lac. Of the 72 ‘Barbus Müller’ sculptures currently catalogued by the specialist, only around twenty are definitively attributed to him – this being the 28th; the fifty or so others, of comparable quality, are ‘attributed to’ Rabany only by convention. Acquired in the 1960s by the Toulouse bookseller Georges Ousset, our sculpture was thought to be of Gallic origin until the Breton academic Florian Blanchard linked it to one of the two photographs published by Montpied. This large female head, adorned with flowers, with well-defined ears, full lips and a shapely bust, stood on a plinth at Rabany’s. It is one of the largest and most accomplished of all known sculptures, making this discovery a significant moment in the history of art brut and the Barbus Müller family. It is being unveiled to mark the sale of Laurent Danchin’s collection – of which it was not a part – paying fresh tribute to the raw, untrained geniuses found by the wayside. Aymeric Rouillac
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About the sale LAURENT DANCHIN COLLECTION: ART BRUT AND OUTSIDER ART
Auction location
Auction time 11/07/2026 at 2:00 PM
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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