Harriet Whitney Frishmuth

Charles A. Aaronson, Sculptured Hyacinths, New York, 1973, pp. 26, 107-09, 206, other examples illustrated
Janis Conner and Joel Rosenkranz, Rediscoveries in American Sculpture: Studio Works 1893-1939, Austin, Texas, 1989, pp. 37, 38, 40-42, 190, another example illustrated
Janis Conner, Frank Hohmann, Leah Rosenblatt Lehmbeck and Thayer Tolles, Captured Motion: The Sculpture of Harriet Whitney Frishmuth, A Catalogue of Works, New York, 2006, no. 1920:1, pp. 28, 66, 79-80, 86, 200, 238, another example illustrated

Joy of the Waters was realized after Harriet Whitney Frishmuth asked her model, Desha Delteil, to imagine how she would react if a cold ripple of water touched her foot while standing barefoot on a rock. Frishmuth captures the figure’s seemingly levitating pose with arms thrown upward, knee raised, and her face animated as she balances upon a rock surrounded by water. Frishmuth submitted Joy of the Waters to the 1925 Women’s World Fair in Chicago, held in April at the American Exposition Palace, and henceforth this particular model became one of Frishmuth’s most well-known sculptures. First conceived in 1917 at 61-inches high, Joy of the Waters was produced in a subsequent edition in 1920 at a reduced size of 44-inches. The present work belongs to this edition of forty-six casts which were produced by Roman Bronze Works in New York until 1970