Monument aux morts de Port-Vendres, Bronze sculpture in the 1st arrondissement, Paris, France
The Monument aux morts de Port-Vendres is a bronze by Aristide Maillol: a seated woman in a long dress, her head bowed and her arms resting on her knees, cast in 1923 for the port town's war dead. The figure measures about 1.65 m high and 2.25 m wide and stands on a stone base at Place de l'Obélisque, facing the harbour.
Aristide Maillol received the commission for Port-Vendres's war memorial in 1919, and the bronze was inaugurated in 1923. A replica cast stands in the Carrousel Garden beside the Louvre in Paris, placed there in 1964, which is the version now in the 1st arrondissement. The reclining figure with olive branches links the harbour town's dead of the First World War to Maillol's late classical style.
Maillol's reclining woman holds an olive branch, a motif tied to the town's memorial ceremonies for its World War I dead. The bronze was inaugurated in 1923, and the same figure was later cast for the Carrousel Garden in Paris in 1964, linking the port's remembrance to the capital.
The bronze is the replica in the Carrousel Garden, Jardin des Tuileries, 1st arrondissement, reached from the Rue de Rivoli side; it stands outdoors on a lawn and gravel area near the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel. There is no shelter, so visit in dry weather and look at the figure from several sides.
The bronze in the Carrousel Garden, installed in 1964, is a second cast of Maillol's Port-Vendres memorial; the original stands in that Mediterranean port. Maillol, born in Banyuls-sur-Mer in 1861, began as a painter and tapestry designer before turning to sculpture in his forties.
The community of curious travelers
AroundUs brings together thousands of curated places, local tips, and hidden gems, enriched daily by 93,997 contributors worldwide.
