The dragonfly is the single most-cited motif in the work of Rene Lalique (1860-1945), and the dragonfly corsage ornament now in the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon is among the most-reproduced and best-known objects of Art Nouveau jewellery. The piece was acquired directly from Lalique by Calouste Gulbenkian, the Armenian-Portuguese collector and oil financier, around 1903-1904, after its showing at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris where it (or a closely related piece) had been part of the Lalique display that established his international reputation. The dragonfly motif itself recurs throughout the Lalique output of the 1895-1910 period in pendants, brooches, hair ornaments and other forms, but the Gulbenkian dragonfly is the type-piece against which all others are measured.

The Gulbenkian dragonfly

The Gulbenkian dragonfly corsage ornament is a large piece, approximately 23 by 26 centimetres, executed principally in gold, with the wings in plique-a-jour enamel and chrysoprase, the body composed of a chrysoprase cabochon and other coloured-stone elements, and a female-figure half-emergence at the head transforming the dragonfly into a hybrid creature characteristic of the Symbolist sensibility of the period. The wings are constructed in the plique-a-jour technique, in which translucent enamel is held in cells of metal without backing, allowing light to pass through as in stained glass. The female figure that emerges from the dragonfly's mouth or body is a recurring Lalique device, in which the natural form is hybridised with the human figure to produce a mythological-symbolic image rather than a naturalistic representation.

Materials and technique

The technical work in the Gulbenkian dragonfly draws on the full range of Lalique's mature Art Nouveau capability. The plique-a-jour enamelling, executed in collaboration with Tourrette and other enamellers of the period, was at the technical limit of what was being produced anywhere in Europe at the time. The chrysoprase setting, with the milky green of the stone playing against the translucency of the enamel, is characteristic of Lalique's preference for materials that complement the design rather than dominate it. The gold work integrates engraving, repousse, chasing and granulation, with diamonds used sparingly as accent rather than as principal stones. The overall effect is one of integrated design in which the technical and the symbolic content are inseparable.

Other dragonfly pieces

Lalique produced numerous other dragonfly pieces during his Art Nouveau career, each with its own design and technical specifics. The Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris and the Petit Palais hold examples; the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum holds, in addition to the principal corsage ornament, a smaller dragonfly diadem and several related pieces. Pendants, brooches and hair ornaments with dragonfly motifs appear in private collections and at auction. The variations in scale, materials, and degree of human-figure hybridisation are considerable, but the central elements of the Lalique dragonfly idiom - plique-a-jour wings, often chrysoprase body, hybrid composition - are consistent across the output.

Symbolic content

The dragonfly was a particularly resonant subject in late nineteenth-century European decorative arts. As an insect of swift flight, transparent wings, and dramatic colour, it lent itself to translation into jewellery. As a creature of brief life and metamorphic origin (emerging from an aquatic nymph form), it carried Symbolist associations of transience, transformation, and the boundary between the natural and the supernatural. The Japonisme current of the 1880s and 1890s, in which Japanese print and decorative art entered European consciousness, contributed further to the dragonfly's status as a fashionable motif, and Lalique's interpretations are in part a response to that broader current.

Position in the Art Nouveau idiom

The Lalique dragonfly stands as the clearest single example of what distinguished Art Nouveau jewellery from the diamond-dominated tradition that preceded it. The materials are chosen for colour, translucency and symbolic content rather than commodity value; the design is integrated rather than centred on a single principal stone; the subject is drawn from nature rather than from heraldry or geometric ornament; and the piece functions as a wearable poetic image rather than as an exhibition of stones. The dragonfly form has been imitated and reinterpreted countless times since 1900, both in Lalique's own subsequent glass production and in the work of other designers, but the Gulbenkian piece remains the type.

Auction and museum status

The Gulbenkian dragonfly is not on the market and is unlikely to enter it, being a museum piece in a permanent foundation collection. Smaller original Lalique dragonfly pieces from the 1895-1910 period appear at auction periodically through Christie's, Sotheby's, and the major Paris houses, with prices reflecting condition, scale, and the quality of the plique-a-jour enamel. Modern reissues of Lalique dragonfly designs in glass have been produced by the contemporary Lalique firm under various ownership arrangements since the post-war period, and these glass pieces are clearly distinguished from the original Art Nouveau jewellery in the secondary market.