Lalanne’s Playful Frog Fountains Surface at Auction
By Richard Whiddington
In 1981, the American designer and collector Alexandra Marshall met Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne while browsing the galleries of Artcurial in Paris. François-Xavier showed her Crapaud, a frog-shaped chair with a cheeky grin. “If you can make a toilet,” Marshall said, “you can probably turn the frog into a fountain.” He could indeed, which is how four turquoise patina frogs came to linger at the corners of her Houston, Texas, swimming pool for decades.
This set of bronze Grenouille fountains, the first Lalanne created, is the marquee lot at Christie’s Design auction at Rockefeller Center on June 10, where it carries an estimate of $2.5 million to $3.5 million.
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Lalanne’s frogs at the side of Alexandra Marshall’s swimming pool in Houston. Photo: Christie’s Images Ltd. 2026.
Recent years have seen a string of works the Lalannes created alongside collaborating patrons hit the market—most notably, Anne Schlumberger’s copper Hippopotamus Bar (1976), which sold for $31.4 million at Sotheby’s last December, a record for the artist.
Marshall’s relationship to the Lalannes was no different. After meeting the couple in Paris, she traveled to their studio in Ury, 50 miles south of the city. There, they talked over a clay model of a flat-backed frog with an “irresistible smile” and discussed her garden’s dimensions and the water mechanism that would make the frogs’ mouths open and close.
François-Xavier Lalanne, one of a set of four Grenouille Fountains, 1981. Photo: Christie’s Images Ltd. 2026.
In typical Lalanne fashion, the resulting frogs merge playful naturalism with high-end function. Crouching at a little over a foot, Lalanne added a surreal twist to the pared-back sculptures by giving them human hands and feet. As Christie’s notes in its press materials, the graceful jets that emerge from the frogs’ mouths plays on the tradition of fountains as sites of theatrical display. Back in March, a single bronze Grenouille fountain sold for £914,400 ($1.2 million) at Christie’s London, more than four times its low estimate.
Henning Koppel’s Eel covered dish. Photo: Christie’s Images Ltd. 2026.
Anchoring the sale is the decorative arts component from the late Philadelphia collector Henry S. McNeil Jr.‘s estate. Last week, his 12-lot sale, which included giants of Minimalism such as Donald Judd and Dan Flavin, sold for $12.8 million. In June, the lead lot is a Henning Koppels eel covered dish from 1956, which Christie’s calls “among the rarest and most technically demanding works in Georg Jensen’s silver production.” It has an estimate of $60,000 to $80,000.
A set of six walnut low-back chairs by Sam Maloof has an estimate of $50,000 to $70,000 and a George Nakashima dining table (one of five lots from the American woodworker) has an estimate of $40,000 to $60,000.
Tiffany Studios, The Boyd Family Memorial Window (The Falls) (1898).Photo: Christie’s Images Ltd. 2026.
Joining Marshall’s frogs is one of Lalanne’s patinated bronze rams from 2008, which carries an estimate of $800,000 to $1.2 million. Its current owner bought it at Christie’s Design in 2022 for $831,600.
Of the 128 lots featured in the Christie’s Design sale, 18 were crafted by Tiffany Studios. The top prize is a late 19th-century window that has illuminated a Connecticut church for the past 125 years. The two-lancet scene depicts a waterfall backgrounded by an idyllic landscape at sunset. The Boyd Family Memorial Window (1898) was restored in the 1990s and carries an estimate of $1.5 million to $2 million.
This article was originally published by Artnet News.