Bibliography
Catherine Lepdor (ed.), Eugène Grasset. L’art et l’ornement, exh. cat. Lausanne, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Milan, Editions 5 Continents, 2011.
Dominique Radrizzani and Julie Enckell (ed.), L’attrait du trait. Dessins anciens et modernes de la collection, Les Cahiers du Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne, n. 11, 2001: n. 35.
Anne Murray-Robertson, Grasset. Pionnier de l’Art nouveau, Lausanne, Editions 24Heures et Bibliothèque des Arts, 1981.
The Lausanne authorities decided to build a fountain on the Promenade de Montbenon after launching the building works for the Federal Courthouse (now the arrondissement courthouse) on the hill in Montbenon in 1881.
Eugène Grasset began working on a complex symbolic design, based on an allegorical figure of Justice pouring out waters into a tiered set of basins. As he wrote, “The idea is based on the distribution of Swiss river systems. The eight upper apertures represent the eight principal second-order rivers, chosen as far as possible to represent the country’s principal regions. […] The upper round basin would contain four apertures representing the four major rivers in the form of animal heads […] for instance, the Aare, the Reuss, the Thielle and the Limmat. Finally, four animals typical of the four regions represented by the general division of the waters cast their spray into the lower rectangular basins. These represent the Rhine, Rhone, Ticino, and Inn”.
Grasset developed a richly ornamental design based on highly stylised plants and animals, influenced by medieval and Egyptian art. Many of his Parisian creations from the early 1880s reflect the same historical inspiration, from his furniture for Charles Gillot to the illustrations for Les Quatre Fils Aymon.
Grasset’s design did not win the commission. The Dapples fountain, built in 1886 at the start of the Allée Ernest-Ansermet, was designed by Benjamin Recordon, the architect in charge of the Federal Courthouse project