Exhibition: 1892, Mauvais génie (Evil Genius), plaster, Salon des Artistes Français, no. 3077.

Ségoffin seems to have drawn inspiration for his Mauvais génie from models of Romantic sculpture, particularly those of Jean-Jacques Feuchère (1807-1857) for his famous Satan (1834) or his Mauvais génie, “terracotta group for a console” (1853). These representations all share a taste for the damned, the defeated, and the desperate, drawing inspiration from literature such as Milton's Paradise Lost, Goethe's Faust, and Dante's Inferno.

This Mauvais génie also offers a superb study of the back (a muscular and knotty back) and a very expressive face that reinforce its fantastical aspect, which Michelangelo and Rodin would not have disowned.

About the artist :

Born in Toulouse, Victor Ségoffin received his early training from Charles Ponsin-Andahary at the École des Beaux-Arts, continued his studies in Paris, and became a student of Aimé Millet at the École des Arts Décoratifs. He was accepted into the École des Beaux-Arts in 1888, where he studied not under Alexandre Falguière from Toulouse, but under Jules Cavelier and then Ernest Barrias from 1894 to 1897. His tenacity finally earned him the Prix de Rome in 1897, the year he turned 30, with Orpheus losing Eurydice for the second time, dragged back into the underworld by Mercury. As a resident at the Villa Medici, he perfected his knowledge of the Florentines of the Quattrocento, as well as Michelangelo and Bernini.

Ségoffin began exhibiting at the Salon des Artistes Français in 1890 in the sculpture section, and went on to exhibit regularly. He won several medals and awards, including a bronze medal at the 1900 World's Fair. The sculptor was in high demand for his portraits of the industrial and political upper middle class, as well as the artistic world: Portraits of Eugène Schneider (1902), Thérèse Combarieu (1905), Dujardin Beaumetz (1914), Marshal Pétain (1921), Marshal Foch (1923), Harpignies (1906), Ziem (1907), Albert Maignan (1909), Léon Bonnat (1910), and others. Beyond the accuracy of the model, he also managed to capture the spirit, the salient feature of a character or attitude.

Ségoffin expressed this sensitivity to “the idea” in more ambitious, highly symbolist works: Mauvais Génie (Evil Genius), La Charité aux Pauvres Honteux (Charity to the Shameful Poor), Semeur de Mondes (Sower of Worlds), La Terre - la Vie - la Paix (Earth - Life - Peace), L'Homme et la Misère Humaine (Man and Human Misery). This creative vein flourished from 1903-1904 onwards, thanks to commissions from the State, for which he modeled Danse Sacrée (Sacred Dance) and La Danse Profane ou Guerrière (Profane or Warrior Dance), intended for the Élysée Palace. He also received several commissions from the State: Le Temps et le Génie de l'Art (Time and the Genius of Art), the Monument Funèbre à Voltaire (Funeral Monument to Voltaire), and Vercingétorix. Through these various works, Ségoffin demonstrated a sense of lively rhythms that nevertheless achieved balance.