Stuart Lochhead Sculpture returns to Maastricht for their second year, following a great success in 2020, when the gallery sold an important bust by François Girardon to Versailles.

Once again, the stand will be designed by Kodai and Associates, architects founded in Kyoto and based in Zürich. The stand’s façade will evoke the traditional Kyoto storefront while the interior layout will include a ‘19th century’ room, housing a selection of marvellous sculptures from that period.

Highlights at the fair include:

A striking Shield with the Head of Medusa by Symbolist artist Arnold Böcklin. The artist’s painterly experimentations were carried out on a mixture of plaster and papier-mâché, which allowed him to blend the paint on the surface of the sculpture and achieve such an iconic rendering of the monster’s features. In light of its groundbreaking approach to the subject, the Shield is widely regarded as the artist’s most accomplished sculpture as well as the epitome of Symbolist aesthetics.

François Rude’s Head of the Old Warrior - one of the main figures in The Marseillaise and one of four large high reliefs decorating the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. The light brown and golden highlights underline the old man’s furrowed brow, as well as his intense gaze and unruly mane of hair, enhancing the expressiveness of the modelling.

Jean-Joseph Carriès’ plaster sculpture Le Grenouillard (The Frog-man). The plaster’s soft modelling and waxy texture, together with its seemingly unmodelled parts, enhance the outlandish nature of the creature and its batrachian entourage. The rich, dark tone of the patination has been referred to by critics as ‘vieux bois’ (‘old wood’). The hybrid nature of the sculpture’s subject is thus reflected in its ambiguous treatment of the medium, displaying both Carriès’ wit and technical prowess.

Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux’s Bacchante with Roses which derives from the Bacchante to the right of The Dance, and is seen on the façade of the Opera in Paris. The sculpture’s features were originally modelled from Mademoiselle Miette, a dancer at the Theatre of the Palais Royal. This is the most sensual bust deriving from the group at the Opera. Turning the full-size figure into a life-size bust, the sculptor covered part of the bacchante's torso with a light cloth, framing her flowing hair with rose vines that fall down to cover part of her left breast. The twist of the figure’s shoulders and head conveys the movement and liveliness of the original model.

The gallery will also exhibit a rare and diverse collection of terracotta sculptures, one of which is a masterpiece by Clodion, called Young Girl with an Urn, which was last seen at the monographic exhibition at the Louvre on the artist in 1992. Also included is a delightful maquette by Jean-Louis Lemoyne for a marble commissioned by Louis XI in 1738 that is now currently at the Met Museum in New York.