Lalanne's Playful Frog Fountains Surface at Auction | Artnet News

In 1981, Alexandra Marshall met Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne in Paris and discussed turning a frog-shaped chair into a fountain. The collaboration produced four turquoise patina bronze Grenouille fountains that remained at the corners of her Houston swimming pool for decades. The fountains are the marquee lot at Christie's Design auction at Rockefeller Center on June 10, with an estimate of $2.5 million to $3.5 million. Recent market activity shows strong demand for Lalanne works made with patrons, including Anne Schlumberger's copper Hippopotamus Bar, which sold for $31.4 million. The frogs combine playful naturalism with functional water jets, and their mouths open and close through a mechanism. A prior single fountain sold for more than four times its low estimate.

"In 1981, the American designer and collector Alexandra Marshall met Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne while browsing the galleries of Artcurial in Paris. François-Xavier showed her Crapaud, a frog-shaped chair with a cheeky grin. "If you can make a toilet," Marshall said, "you can probably turn the frog into a fountain." He could indeed, which is how four turquoise patina frogs came to linger at the corners of her Houston, Texas, swimming pool for decades."

"This set of bronze Grenouille fountains, the first Lalanne created, is the marquee lot at Christie's Design auction at Rockefeller Center on June 10, where it carries an estimate of $2.5 million to $3.5 million. Recent years have seen a string of works the Lalannes created alongside collaborating patrons hit the market-most notably, Anne Schlumberger's copper Hippopotamus Bar (1976), which sold for $31.4 million at Sotheby's last December, a record for the artist."

"After meeting the couple in Paris, she traveled to their studio in Ury, 50 miles south of the city. There, they talked over a clay model of a flat-backed frog with an "irresistible smile" and discussed her garden's dimensions and the water mechanism that would make the frogs' mouths open and close. In typical Lalanne fashion, the resulting frogs merge playful naturalism with high-end function."

"As Christie's notes in its press materials, the graceful jets that emerge from the frogs' mouths plays on the tradition of fountains as sites of theatrical display. Back in March, a single bronze Grenouille fountain sold for £914,400 ($1.2 million) at Christie's London, more than four times its low estimate. Anchoring the sale is the decorative arts component from the late Philadelphia collector Henry S. McNeil Jr.'s estate."

Read at Artnet News