Hector Guimard's Art Nouveau Railway Washstand

Hector Guimard (1867 - 1942), French Art Nouveau railway washstand, cast iron with marble top, late 19th century. 78 cm high, 71 cm wide, 47 cm deep, Guimard is by far the best-known French Art Nouveau architect, to the extent that in some French circles Art Nouveau was referred to as Style Guimard, a moniker promoted by Guimard himself. His work is easy to distinguish amongst other practitioners of the style, with plastic, abstracted and sometimes bizarre vegetal and floral imagery in iron, glass, and carved stone that is usually twisted and bent into irregular and asymmetrical forms. Guimard's Paris Metro entrances are his signature work and classic emblems of Art Nouveau, which combine the movement's embrace of nature as well as the advances of technology, standardization, and modernization. Guimard's wife Adeline was of Jewish descent, and with the growing Nazi threat in the late 1930s and the German antipathy towards modern art as showcased in the Degenerate Art Exhibition that opened in Munich in 1937, the two felt unsafe and migrated to New York in 1938, Hector died there four years later. After the war Adeline returned to France and attempted to find an institutional home for her late husband's archives. She was unsuccessful, with most of his design documentation, correspondence and drawings being donated to the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the New York Public Library. She donated the remaining original furniture in her possession to several Parisian and Lyonnais museums where they are now celebrated as icons of the Art Nouveau movement. It is rare for original pieces to come to market.