Charles Bigonet

Charles Bigonet was born in 1877 in Paris, in the 18th arrondissement. One auction house catalogue describes him as coming from an Italian family, though this detail is corroborated by only a single source. He trained at the Ecole nationale superieure des beaux-arts de Paris, where he studied under the sculptor Louis-Ernest Barrias and formed a friendship with fellow sculptors Henri Bouchard and Fernand David. No degree or exact attendance years are documented.

Bigonet exhibited at the Salon de la Societe des artistes francais, the Salon d'Automne, and the Salon des Tuileries in Paris, and won a third-class medal at the Salon des artistes francais in 1909. In 1912 he won the Prix Abd-el-Tif, a prize administered by the French colonial government of Algeria that funded a two-year residency at the Villa Abd-el-Tif in Algiers. His time there shaped a body of Orientalist figures, including the recurring subject Zohra, and led to public commissions in French Algeria: a monument to the dead of 1914 to 1918 in Oran, dated 1923, and the Monument au Genie colonisateur francais in Boufarik, dated 1930, which has since been lost. A plaster bas-relief fragment from the Boufarik monument is preserved at the museum La Piscine in Roubaix, France.

Bigonet died in 1931 in Paris, in the 14th arrondissement. Public sources agree on the year and arrondissement of his death but do not provide a confirmed day and month; one secondary reference points to June 1931, but this has not been corroborated by a second source and is treated here as unconfirmed.

No verbatim critical assessment of Bigonet from a named critic in a major outlet could be confirmed in available sources, so none is quoted here. His standing rests instead on institutional and official markers: a Salon medal in 1909, the Prix Abd-el-Tif in 1912, and public commissions for the French colonial administration in Algeria. His Orientalist figures, including Zohra and La Mauresque au bain, are held today by the Musee national des Beaux-Arts d'Alger and the Villa Abd-el-Tif collection in Algiers, alongside holdings in France's Fonds national d'art contemporain and at La Piscine in Roubaix, indicating a modest but genuine institutional footprint beyond the secondary market.

Bigonet's market is small and centers on cast bronzes of a single recurring subject, Zohra, femme arabe accroupie (Zohra, Arab woman squatting), signed "C. Bigonet" and in some examples marked with the foundry stamp "CIRE PERDUE SIOT." A market listing places the highest documented figure for this work at EUR 32,000, though the auction house, location, and exact sale date behind that figure are not confirmed in public records. French auction houses have more recently estimated examples of the same work in the range of EUR 12,000 to 15,000. No current gallery or estate is documented as representing Bigonet; occasional secondary-market listings, such as one through Galerie Nicolas Bourriaud, reflect individual consignments rather than formal representation.

There is no catalogue raisonne for Charles Bigonet, so provenance, signature, and foundry marks are the primary tools for authenticating a bronze. His market is thin: the same subject, Zohra, femme arabe accroupie, recurs across multiple sale listings, but hammer prices, sale venues, and dates are inconsistently disclosed, and the highest publicly cited figure of EUR 32,000 lacks a confirmed house, location, and date. Collectors should treat any single reported price with caution and weigh museum presence in Algiers, Puteaux, and Roubaix as the more durable signal of his standing.