François Pompon: Polar Bear, 1922 – Porcelain Art Mug

Paris, autumn 1922. In a corner of the Salon d'Automne an unassuming plaster figure of a polar bear stops visitors mid-step. No anecdotal detail, no textured fur, no glass-eyed realism — just the economical sweep of a shoulder turning into a paw, and a head lifted mid-stride. François Pompon, then sixty-seven and known outside the studios chiefly as the man who had carved other sculptors' marble — Rodin's above all — had made the sculpture of his life.

The Ours blanc went on to define an era. Pompon spent his last decade executing it in stone, marble and bronze for collectors and public collections across France, and in 1925 Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann placed a cast at the centre of his pavilion at the Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs — the exhibition that gave Art Deco its name. Through radical simplification he found something truer about the animal than surface naturalism ever could.

Which version this is

The bear on this mug is the marble, cut about 1923 — the Salon plaster carried into stone, forty-eight centimetres long on a black marble base, and bought for a New York collection in 1930. It is photographed side on in the museum’s studio against a plain grey ground, so that nothing competes with the silhouette. The marble is left as it is: a warm off-white that the porcelain takes up almost exactly.

Fine porcelain, 10 oz — 104 mm high, 75 mm across the base. The image runs around the body; handle and rim stay white. Dishwasher and microwave safe.

François Pompon (1855–1933), Polar Bear (Ours blanc), ca. 1923; marble on marble base, 27.9 × 48.3 × 17.1 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 30.123ab, Purchase, Edward C. Moore Jr. Gift, 1930. The sculpture is in the public domain — Pompon died in 1933. The photograph is the museum’s own, released under CC0 1.0 through its Open Access programme.

Selected by Dr. Walther Fuchs for the Tazzarte collection.