Agnes de Frumerie
Agnès de Frumerie was a multi-talented woman whose greatest contribution to French Art Nouveau ceramics was her ability to seamlessly integrate depictions of the human figure into a wide variety of stoneware forms. In 1893 de Frumerie was admitted to the National Society of Fine Arts, Paris, where she met ceramist Adrien Dalpayrat. They worked together in 1895 for a brief time before she began her collaboration of nearly ten years with Edmond Lachenal. De Frumerie's and Lachenal's collaborative efforts, mostly figural vases, appeared frequently in the salons and other exhibitions in those years and achieved enormous success.
Born Agnès Kjellberg in 1869 in Skövde, Sweden, Agnes de Frumerie studied painting and sculpture at a local technical school before becoming Edward Hald's student at the Royal Academy of Free Arts in Stockholm. In 1891 she left Sweden, continued her studies in Berlin, traveled to Italy, and finally settled in Paris in 1892. There she worked with Swedish sculptor, Christian Eriksson and also became acquainted with sculptor Auguste Rodin. Her later work shows that she was strongly influenced by Rodin's ability to depict human emotion and both idealized and unidealized human anatomy (the latter as demonstrated by The Burghers of Calais (completed in1888). Agnes married physician Dr. Gustav de Frumerie in 1892 or 1893 and briefly used the hyphenated name Kjellberg-de Frumerie.
De Frumerie's forms generally present the dreamy side of Symbolism—rather than the nightmarish side—and are softened by the organic contours favored by Art Nouveau clients and critics. Her designs were executed by Lachenal in fine stoneware clay and decorated with velvet opaque glazes in hues of green sometimes shaded with blue.
In an outstanding example of their collaborative work, an allegorical frieze depicting the stages of women's lives wraps around a vase. Modeled in high relief, the four figures engage in the dance of life, their linked hands denoting the progression of blooming womanhood to its inevitable decay. De Frumerie's frank treatment of the desiccated old woman, highlighting the influence of Rodin's Burghers-of-Calais style, is a marked departure from idealized representations of the female form that appear on many of her ceramics. The muted earth tones of the mat glaze are in keeping with the vase's somber subject.
While in Paris, de Frumerie studied the pâte-de-verre technique of creating decorative glassware and began to specialize in it. In 1930, she and her husband returned to Sweden, to the town of Hindås, where she continued to work in pâte-de-verre, creating objects with relief patterns of swimming female figures, fish and naiads.
