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Sculpture

Elizabeth Larocque

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Type
Sculpture(Opens in new tab)
Date
1928
Accession number
95.7
Maker
Jo Davidson(Opens in new tab) (American, 1883–1952)
Dimensions
17 1/2 × 7 1/2 × 9 in. (44.5 × 19.1 × 22.9 cm.)
Medium
limestone (polychromed burgundy)
Description
Jo Davidson was one of the foremost American portrait sculptors of the first half of the twentieth century, renowned for his depictions of cultural, political, and financial leaders from Ignace Paderewski and Gertrude Stein to John D. Rockefeller and Mahatma Gandhi. Born into a poor Russian family on New York's Lower East Side, Davidson was expected to study medicine, but he showed early drawing talent and won a scholarship from the Art Students League. Although he began medical studies at Yale University, Davidson then turned to sculpture at the Yale School of Fine Arts. In New York, he studied at the Art Students League with George de Forest Brush and worked as an assistant to the sculptor Hermon MacNeil until 1904. Although Davidson's work remained grounded in the traditional academic style, from the time of his first trip to Paris in 1907, where he briefly attended the Ecole des Beaux Arts, he associated himself with the artistic avant-garde. He was in love with life in Paris and soon became a colorful regular at the Bohemian haunt, the Café du Dome, recognized by his burly black beard and his Great Dane, Sultan, a stray who adopted him one night on the streets of Paris. In 1908, Davidson joined Max Weber, Alfred Maurer, Edward Steichen, and John Marin to establish the New York Society of American Artists in Paris, and in 1913, with his friend Walt Kuhn, he helped to organize the Armory Show in New York. Davidson was a portraitist by nature and acquired a reputation for his ability to model a portrait bust in a single sitting. The bust of Elizabeth Laroque is a fine example of the sculptor's work from the height of his career. Larocque, the daughter of a wealthy New York lawyer, was a published poet and society figure of some repute. Her family commissioned Davidson to execute a portrait bust in bronze in 1928. The artist, who was often fascinated by the appearance and personalities of his sitters, would on occasion complete another version of the required portrait for his own pleasure. This version of Larocque was such a work, done when Davidson was experimenting with the polychroming of carved burgundy limestone. The result is a work that stands in dramatic contrast to the usual surface of a bronze bust with its more conventional patina. Davidson's portrait of Elizabeth Larocque also reflects the Egyptomania that swept the world with the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun by the English archaeologist, Howard Carter, in 1922. Fashion design and advertising immediately cashed in on "Tutmania," producing clothes and accessories with an Egyptian feel. The new fashion was particularly popular with the liberated woman of the 1920s who started to take control of her own body, reshaping it and the clothes that adorned it. Larocque's hairstyle draws heavily on ancient Egyptian influences. It is reminiscent of the bob worn so elegantly by Nofret, the wife of Rahotep, on a statue now in the Cairo Museum, and popularized in the 1920s and 1930s by the German actress Louise Brooks, who starred in such films as Die Büchse der Pandora, later re-released as Pandora's Box (1928). This hairstyle complements the clean lines of the Art Deco style that characterizes this bust. Art Deco became particularly influential after the international Arts Decoratifs exhibition in Paris in 1925. The style emphasized precise lines, boldly delineated geometric shapes, and strong colors - characteristics of Egyptian art upon which the movement drew for many of its designs and which can clearly be seen in Davidson's portrayal of Larocque.
Credit
The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Purchased with funds from the Ahmanson Foundation
Object copyright
© Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Department
American Art
Find out more
View in the Art Museum catalog(Opens in new tab)
Jo Davidson's portrait of New York socialite and poet Elizabeth Larocque draws on ancient Egyptian sources for her hairstyle and the decorative motif on her earrings, testifying to the "Egyptomania" that swept the world following the discovery of King Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922. The geometric mass of Laroque's head and the clean contour lines also demonstrate the Art Deco characteristics that Davidson adopted in his work after 1925. Larocque's family commissioned, and Davidson completed, a bronze sculpture, but, fascinated by the personality of the sitter, he also produced this version in limestone, which allowed him to add color to the work.
Jo Davidson was one of the foremost American portrait sculptors of the first half of the twentieth century, renowned for his depictions of cultural, political, and financial leaders from Ignace Paderewski and Gertrude Stein to John D. Rockefeller and Mahatma Gandhi.

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