Private Collection, Paris
Acquired from the above by the present owner

John Rewald, Maillol, London, 1939, illustration of another cast p. 111
Maillol, Exposition-Hommage du Centenaire de sa naissance (exhibition catalogue), Galerie Daber, Paris, 1961, no. 3, illustration of another cast pl. XII
Waldemar George, Aristide Maillol, Greenwich, 1965, illustrated p. 137
Waldemar George, Maillol, London, 1971, illustration of another cast p. 56
Maillol au Palais des Rois de Majorque (exhibition catalogue), Musée Hyacinthe Rigaud-Perpignan, 1979, no. 4, illustration of another cast p. 40
Bertrand Lorquin, Aristide Maillol, London, 1995, illustrated p. 53
Maillol (exhibition catalogue), Georg Kolbe-Museum, Berlin; Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne; Gerhard Marcks-Museum, Bremen; Städtische Kunsthalle, Mannheim, 1996-97, illustration of the terracotta cast p. 97
Aristide Maillol (exhibition catalogue), Palais des Congrès, Perpignan, 2000, no. 13, illustration of the plaster p. 55

Conceived in 1900, Léda is the first sculpture of great importance in Maillol's oeuvre.  In the summer of 1902, Maillol exhibited this work, along with about thirty other statuettes and tapestries, at the gallery of his dealer, Ambroise Vollard, on the rue Lafitte.  The sculpture of the mythical character Léda was among the most praised of those works included in the exhibition, and the writer Octave Mirbeau was so enchanted by this elegant figure that he purchased a bronze cast of it. 

Mirbeau was not the only aesthete to admire the beauty of this sculpture. Shortly after Mirbeau purchased it, Auguste Rodin visited him and took a great interest in this work upon seeing it in his home.  "Rodin came here," Mirbeau reported to Maillol. "He picked up your Léda, just as I had done, and looked at it intently, examining it from every angle, turning it round in every direction."  John Rewald recounts what happened during this encounter: " 'It is most beautiful,' he said, 'what an artist!'  He looked at it again, and went on: "Do you know why it is so beautiful and why one can spend hours looking at it?  It is because it makes no attempt to arouse curiosity.'  And there was a look of melancholy in his eyes.  'I do not know, I swear I do not know of any modern piece of sculpture that is of such an absolute beauty, an absolute purity, so evidently a masterpiece'  " (John Rewald, Maillol, London, 1939, p. 13).