Pierre DUNAND (1914-1996). Couple of panthers drinking, circ - Lot 102

Pierre DUNAND (1914-1996). Couple of panthers drinking, circa 1945. Lacquer panel on a gold powder background. Signed lower left. 153 x 212,5 cm. Provenance: Private collection, Paris. Acquired by the present owner directly from the artist. The third son of Jean Dunand, Pierre Dunand quickly abandoned a classical and general school curriculum to join the family business at the age of seventeen. Attracted and fascinated at first by brassware, he eventually turned to and devoted himself more readily to the creation of lacquerware, trained in these two disciplines by the craftsmen working in his father's workshops. Showing great skill and autonomy in the design of independent pieces, Pierre Dunand nevertheless worked hard to promote his father's work until after the latter's death in 1942. Pierre's name only appears sporadically and occasionally and until that date, the artist does not sign his personal works, which will hardly change after the death of the patriarch. Continuing to collaborate with the same decorators and cabinetmakers as Jean Dunand - such as Jules Leleu, essentially for lacquering, and Eugène Printz for inlays and brassware elements - Pierre never really deviated from the aesthetics instigated by his father; the company's regular customers remained very receptive and demanding of the "Dunand style", hindering formal innovation within the workshops in certain respects. Pierre Dunand nevertheless remained a virtuoso designer who was at the origin of inventions and technical improvements which he did not hesitate to patent and which he used in both furniture and monumental productions. From 1942-1943, Pierre Dunand designed the wall decoration of the bridge lounge of the liner La Marseillaise, whose lacquer panels represent a jungle - according to an idea and original sketches by Jean Dunand - with luxuriant animal and floral species over a length of almost ten meters. During the 1940s, he also reworked a number of panels that his father had created for the Normandie, which were reassembled on the Ile-de-France and the Liberté. At the beginning of the 1950s, Pierre's personal and autonomous creations - in particular a series of abstract vases - met with little success with a public whose tastes had evolved. He decided to leave the family business in 1958 to turn to the creation of caravans, which he had started as an amateur a few years earlier.