Our cover this month, Bons Amis by Guillaume Seignac, sold for $7,500 at Doyle’s Fine Paintings auction on Oct. 10, 2018 in New York City. Born in Rennes, France, Seignac was an academically trained artist who, for the most part, also embraced the classical subject matter of the Renaissance.
A student of the L’École des Beaux-Arts, Seignac’s work reflects the prestigious school’s influence, with its emphasis on life drawing, perspective and anatomy. In particular, Seignac had a penchant for female nudes based on Greek and Roman protypes. One such piece set a world record for the artist in 2016, when it sold at auction for $252,000.
His talent, however, was well-established decades ago, with records indicating that his paintings were selling well in the early 1900s. His career flourished in part due to the environment in Paris, one that, at the time, nourished artistic developments and saw the growth of private art galleries. Seignac’s reputation was cemented, quite literally, when a friend sculpted a life size bronze of the artist, which can be found in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in his hometown, Rennes.
Artists frequently face the challenge of deciding whether to conform to a particular movement or style or take the chance of starting their own. This dilemma is similar to one faced by many law firms and attorneys. In “Focusing on the Long Game,” by Marvin E. Blum and Kelsey A. Brock, p. 64, the authors posit why hiring a “baby lawyer” fresh out of law school may have a better end result than hiring a seasoned attorney, at least for the firm willing to put in the work to “raise” one.