Harriet Whitney Frishmuth

Newman Galleries, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Buck Hill Art Association, Buck Hill Falls, Pennsylvania (acquired from the above in 1974)

Sotheby's, New York, 19 May 2010, lot 74 (consigned by the above)

Acquired from the above by the present owner

Charles N. Aronson, Sculptured Hyacinths, New York 1973, pp. 145-155, 211, illustrations of another example

Janis Conner and Joel Rosenkranz, Rediscoveries in American Sculpture: Studio Works, 1893-1939, Austin, Texas 1989, p. 40

Janis Conner, Leah Rosenblatt Lehmbeck, Thayer Tolles, Captured Motion: The Sculpture of Harriet Whitney Frishmuth, A Catalogue of Works, New York 2006, pp. 38, 51, 71-72, 84, 172-73, 247, illustrations of other examples

In 1924, Harriet Frishmuth received a commission to design a garden sculpture for her longtime patron, Valeria Langeloth. Out of six maquettes, Langeloth chose Humoresque. Captured Motion, the definitive publication on Harriet Whitney Frishmuth's sculpture, describes the piece as “one of [the artist's] lovliest fountains...The curvaceous sea nymph grasps a fish that curls around her shoulder while she prances upon a large fish beneath her feet. Modeled with great attention to detail, the fish is piped to allow water to spring in an arc from its open mouth" (Janis Connor, et al., Captured Motion: The Sculpture of Harriet Whitney Frishmuth, 2006, p. 171). The model for the sculpture was Desha Delteil, a professional dancer who posed for over thirty of Frishmuth’s sculptures.

This example of Humoresque is one of nine original casts of the work, two of which were from the American Art Foundry.