A pupil of Jean-Léon Gérôme, Gustave Dussart was influenced by the academic art movement of the late 19th century. The allegorical figure of the Pêcheur or fisherman is a genre scene. Wearing a Phrygian cap, the fisherman is represented hard at work, pulling his net from the water, gripping a tree t...
A pupil of Jean-Léon Gérôme, Gustave Dussart was influenced by the academic art movement of the late 19th century. The allegorical figure of the Pêcheur or fisherman is a genre scene. Wearing a Phrygian cap, the fisherman is represented hard at work, pulling his net from the water, gripping a tree trunk and with one foot on the rock. The cap, commonly worn by local fishers, is part of a long tradition that dates back to Ancient Greece. Installed on the shore, the sculpture celebrates the ancestral fishing culture of the Mediterranean coast. The sculpture was made in 1917 at the Rudier Foundry, which worked with Rodin, Bourdelle, and Maillol. Having been acquired in 1970 by Prince Rainier III, the piece was originally installed in the Hall du Centenaire in Monte-Carlo.
Born on 27 September 1875 in the northern French city of Lille, Louis Gustave Dussart married Marguerite Fontana, the daughter of construction magnate Jean-Philippe Fontana, in Monaco in 1905. Dussart was a pupil of Jean-Léon Gérome. A member of the Paris Salon des Artistes Français since 1904, he was awarded an “honourable mention” in 1909. In 1903, he produced two sculptures for the façade of the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco, Le Secours and Le Progrès venant au secours de l’Humanité . In 1897, he made a bust of Colonel William Frederick Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill. He died on 19 February 1952 in Amiens, in the Somme département of northern France.
