Modern Day Auction
Modern Day Auction
Property from an Important American Collector
Duck Baby
Auction Closed
May 16, 09:00 PM GMT
Estimate
15,000 - 25,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
Property from an Important American Collector
Edith Barretto Stevens Parsons
1878 - 1956
Duck Baby
inscribed Edith Barretto Parsons © / EGF III (along the base)
bronze
height: 42 in. 106.7 cm.
Private Collection, Louisiana
Sotheby's, New York, 3 December 2003, lot 38 (consigned by the above)
Acquired from the above by the present owner
Turn-of-the century sculptor Edith Barretto Stevens Parsons is best known for her whimsical bronzes. Parsons trained under artists Daniel Chester French and J.H. Twachtman, gaining early critical approval and membership to the National Sculpture Society for her monumental works. The birth of her two children, however, inspired her to create on a smaller scale intended for homes and gardens. Duck Baby celebrates the everyday joys of nature with unbridled delight.
Parsons designed the original Duck Baby form for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, a world’s fair held in San Francisco to commemorate the completion of the Panama Canal. Her design drew significant praise– as the exposition handbook described, “in the presence of so much that is weighty and powerful, the popularity of Duck Baby is a significant and touching indication of the world’s hunger for what is cheerful and mirth-provoking” (as quoted in Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein, American Women Sculptors, Boston, 1990, p. 162).
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