a silvered bronze, probably Italian, Rome, circa 1938, modelled as a young woman leaning forwards emerging from water, on a stepped square base, signed to buttock 'D.PUECH / Rome 1938', similarly signed less clearly to front terrace, 17cm high

The French sculptor Denys Puech, of humble Aveyronnais farming origins, trained in the Paris workshops of François Jouffroy, Alexandre Falguière and Henri Chapu, at the same time following an evening course at the Beaux-Arts. Winning the Prix de Rome in 1884, in the following years he received several official commissions from the Third Republic. He founded a museum of fine art in Rodez, Aveyron, in 1903 (now the Musée Denys-Puech), inaugurated in 1910, designed by him in conjunction with the architect Boyer. Elected a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1905, and made a knight of the Légion d'honneur in 1908, in the same year he married the painter Princess Anina Gagarine Sturdza (1865-1918). Spending much time in Rome, executing a bust of Mussolini in 1925, he served at the Villa Medici as Director of the French Academy in the city from 1921 to 1933.