Amalric Walter and Henri Bergé "À la fontaine" Bookend

In this pâte-de-verre bookend, a nude woman kneels in a grassy field at the base of a marble column draped in ivy and moss. The composition is clearly conceived as a nude reinterpretation of William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s celebrated 1898 painting À la fontaine, in which two sisters drink from a spring in the French countryside. The painting’s popularity spread rapidly through a photograph issued that same year and sold in multiple formats by Braun & Clément, whose reproductions circulated widely throughout Europe and the United States.