"With this graceful statue, the artist created a sculpture astonishing for her oeuvre which in its slenderness and facial shape resembles self-portrait features"
"Mit dieser grazilen Statue schuf die Künstlerin ein für ihr Werk überraschende Skulptur, die in ihrer Schlankheit und den Gesichtszügen selbstbildnishafte Züge aufweist."
ABOUT THE COLLECTOR
William Carter Dickerman (12 December 1874, Bethlehem, PA - 25 April 1946, New York, NY) was an American industrialist. He earned a Doctor of Engineering from the Lehigh University in 1938 and was awarded the Doctor of Laws from the Union College Schenectady N.Y. in 1945.
In 1929 he became president of the American Locomotive Company until he was appointed Chairman of the Board. In addition and on request of the late president Roosevelt, W. C. Dickerman became a member of the Business Advisory Council of Commerce in the early 1930s. Furthermore, he served as director and member on several boards, executive committees and councils of leading corporations within his field, such as the American Car & Foundry Company, the General Electric Company and the United Gas Improvement Company etc. He was actively engaged in the railroad business for more than 50 years.
Alongside his impressive professional achievements, he was also an art enthusiast. His work frequently brought him to Europe where he acquired many works of art, much to the challenge of his wife, Alice Carter Dickerman (18608-1959), who strove to find space to exhibit pieces within their home.
W. C. Dickerman served as a trustee of the Grand Central Art Galleries, New York, and was a member of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The American Museum of Natural History, the Royal Society of Arts, London and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, where his children and grandchildren proudly admired another version of the present sculpture whenever they visited. Daphne was displayed in the garden of their beautiful East Hampton estate, built in 1900. The sculpture has since been passed down in the family honored and admired in the family's gardens through generations.
“I remember running into Daphne in MOMA’s sculpture garden (probably early 60s), being startled, but recognizing her as equivalent to ours in Connecticut. And thus, that she was something special.”
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Renée Sintenis (1888-1965) is one of the most renowned and accomplished German sculptresses as well as one of the most important female protagonists of the art world in the 1920s and 1930s.
Sintenis was forced to cut short her studies of art and sculpture at the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Berlin to work for her father. She, however, made the difficult decision to pursue her life as an artist, a choice that transformed her life drastically as it required her to cut ties with her family.
In 1913, her works were exhibited at the Berlin Secession, this was a major exception for women artists in the art world of the 1920s and 1930s. Sintenis was held in high esteem by her colleagues at the Freie Secession, such as Max Beckmann, Max Liebermann and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. She maintained a close friendship with Georg Kolbe for many years and her inner circle of friends included personalities such as Rainer Maria Rilke. From 1917 onwards, she received the greatest support for her work and development as an artist from her husband, Emil Rudolf Weiß, who was also active as an artist.
During the Weimar Republic, Sintenis achieved a broader international reputation. Her works were not only shown in the National Gallery in Berlin, but also in Paris and London, as well as in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. At that time, her sculptures already found their ways into important museums and private collections worldwide. In 1931, a year after Sintenis created the Große Daphne, she became the first female sculptor to be appointed to the Prussian Academy of Arts, where she taught until she was dismissed by the National Socialists in 1934. Because of her Jewish origins, Sintenis was considered a degenerated artist in Berlin during the Nazi era. Her works were removed from museums, but she continued to work and became a well respected artist during her lifetime. After her husband's death in 1942, she worked aside the studio of Max Pechstein. And after the war in 1948, she was appointed by Karl Hofer to the Hochschule der Bildenden Künste in Berlin, where she became a professor in 1955. In the same year, she was also appointed to the newly founded Akademie der Künste in Berlin.
Influenced by her childhood and her connection with nature, she predominantly focused in her oeuvre on creating small-format animal sculptures, female nudes, portraits and sports statuettes. Despite her rejection of monumental sculpture, she became especially widely known for her sculpture of the Berlin Bear, a landmark of Berlin. Today, replicas of this sculpture also serve as an annual award for the winner of the Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale).
Sintenis is a one of the most remarkable artists of her time. She always remained true to her artistic sensibility. This, along with her self-confident character and fashionable appearance meant that she brilliantly embodied the image of the modern woman as well as pioneer for many artists after her.
About the Origin
The present sculpture is a superb and rare example by this extraordinary German female sculptor, the work, dating from 1930 constitutes her only large-scale human sculpture.
In 1918, Sintenis conceived a small version of Daphne. The larger format was originally commissioned for the garden of the Museum of Art and History in Lübeck, Germany by its former director C.G. Heise. This cast was gilded and still stands in its original position in Germany.
The edition size of the present work was previously thought to be ten, the casting book at Noack foundry, however, provides more detailed information on the numbering. Three casts were executed in 1930, the year of the works conception. Five further casts were made before 1935 and after the war until 1965 five additional casts were produced. This concludes that at least thirteen casts were executed during the artist's life-time. Cast in 1930 or 1931, this present sculpture is certainly one of the first five casts made during the artist's lifetime.
Sintenis had all her bronzes cast by the renowned foundry Noack in Berlin. The present bronze carries the foundry stamp of H. NOACK BERLIN FRIEDENAU which underlines the early date of the sculpture and presents a prime example of the quality craftsmanship of the foundry.
Whereas Sintenis sculptures are in general not numbered the present cast carries the roman numbering II. This kind of numbering only appears on bronze sculptures which were imported to the US before the Second World War, used by the custom office for verification of works of art. During this time only the first two casts that were imported by a respective edition where considered an artwork by the US customs office and were allowed to be imported customs-free, thereby the numbering 1 or 2 can generally often be found on bronzes handled in that time.
Today a majority of the known casts are part of important museum collections, such as the Museum Behnhaus, Lübeck; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Osthaus Museum, Hagen; Saarland-Museum, Saarbrücken; Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis; Harvard Art Museum, Cambridge; respectively a lifetime cast from this edition is rare to come to the market. Next to the present cast there was one particular other cast that made it to the US into a private American collection. This was the collection of Abby Rockefeller, wife to John D. Rockefeller Jr., a passionate philanthropist who later gifted the sculpture to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where it remains to date, housed in the exceptional sculpture garden (see fig. 5). (Referenced from the expert report by Dr. Ursel Berger, 10 March 2022; We are grateful to Dr. Berger for the research and assistance with cataloguing this work.)
Right: Fig. 4: Reneé Sintenis, Große Daphne, 1930/31 - detail of foundry mark on the base of the bronze.
ABOUT THE SUBJECT
The figure of Daphne comes from Greek mythology. Sintenis engages with this classical theme, the representation of Daphne from Ovid's Metamorphoses and translates it into modern times.
The poem tells of the virgin nymph Daphne, who, fleeing from the lovesick god Apollo, is saved by her father Peneus, who transforms her into a laurel tree. In the present work, Sintenis captures the dramatic moment in the midst of the spontaneous transformation.
The surface texture of the sculpture conveys the impression of tree bark in contrast to a fine female skin, which in turn is further emphasised by the naturally aged patina of the present sculpture. The elongated body, accentuated by the raised arms, the posture with its slight rotation of the joints, the movement of the figure itself, together with the leaves growing from her ankles and hair, allow the viewer to experience the transformation that is already taking place. By this, Sintenis achieves an outstanding physicality in the figure that appears both strong and fragile at the same time. One of the most famous representations of this story can be found in the Villa Borghese in Rome with Gian Lorenzo Bernini's life-size marble sculptures of Apollo and Daphne (see fig. 5). Bernini, however, translates the story into a dialogue between two figures, depicting the moment they share. In contrast, Sintenis isolates the figure of Daphne and deals only on her and the process of transformation.
Revisiting the figure of Daphne that she had first addressed in 1917/18, in 1930 Sintenis succeeded in creating an incredibly elegant and beautiful figure in the large Daphne. On the one hand we are captivated by the breathtaking expression and remarkable grace of the present work and on the other hand she presents us with the perfect balancing act. Sintenis translates an allegory not only into modernity but also into the modern representation of femininity and the modern woman, the self-determined and self-confident female image of the 20s. Through this profound and elegant allegory the present work embodies one of Sintenis's finest works.
