Paris, autumn 1922. In a corner of the Salon d'Automne, an unassuming plaster figure of a polar bear stops visitors mid-step. There are no anecdotal details, no textured fur, no glass-eyed realism — just the pure, economical sweep of a shoulder turning into a paw, a head lowered mid-stride. François Pompon, then sixty-seven and largely unknown outside the studios of Auguste Rodin where he had spent decades as an assistant, has just made the sculpture of his life.
The Ours blanc (Polar Bear) would go on to define an era. Pompon spent his final decade executing it in marble, stone and bronze for collectors and public collections across France, and in 1925 Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann placed a cast at the centre of his celebrated pavilion at the Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs — the exhibition that gave Art Deco its name. Through radical simplification, Pompon found something truer about the animal than surface naturalism ever could.
The large stone Ours blanc remains one of the most photographed works at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris today, still stopping visitors in exactly the way the plaster did in 1922.
Fine Porcelain — 10 oz. Dishwasher and microwave safe.
François Pompon, Ours blanc (Polar Bear): plaster shown at the Salon d'Automne, Paris, 1922; stone version executed 1923–33, H. 163 × L. 251 × D. 90 cm, Musée d'Orsay, Paris. Public domain; Pompon died in 1933.
Selected by Dr. Walther Fuchs for the Tazzarte collection.
