ON VIEW

Sculptor Harriet Whitney Frishmuth is best known for her exuberant and joyful figures of young women. Born into a family of Philadelphia physicians, Frishmuth spent much of her youth in Europe. Intending to become a musician, she developed an interest in sculpture instead. Her formal study began in Paris with a women's modeling class overseen by Auguste Rodin (1840-1917); later, Frishmuth would attend academies and schools in Paris, Berlin, and New York City. Rounding off her training with two years of anatomical studies at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, she opened a studio in New York about 1908.

During the 1910s Frishmuth gained increasing attention for her garden and fountain sculptures. Using professional dancers as models, the artist created a series of compositions featuring nude female figures in expressively animated poses. As she refined this theme in the 1920s, Frishmuth won a number of honors, including the Elizabeth N. Watrous Gold Medal and the Julia A. Shaw Prize of the National Academy of Design. Following her election to the National Academy in 1929, Frishmuth produced fewer new works. Instead, much of her later career was devoted to supervising the casting and marketing of earlier compositions. Retreating into relative obscurity as she grew older, Frishmuth spent her final years in a retirement home in Connecticut, where she died in 1980 at the age of ninety-nine.

Originally modeled in 1925, The Crest of the Wave was produced at the height of Frishmuth's career and was one of her most popular works. Stepping lightly atop a stylized wave, a lithe nude woman, a kind of sea nymph, raises her arms in an attitude of joyful vigor. Her streaming hair echoes the motion of the bronze current below, from which small fish spout jets of real water into a surrounding marble basin. The strong vertical thrust of the figure, a recurring element in Frishmuth's work, contributes further to the sense of movement and buoyancy that animates the sculpture.

Like many of Frishmuth's sculptures, The Crest of the Wave utilizes the human form to express a psychological state, in this case, one of ebullient joy. Conveyed not only by the figure's expression but also by its upswept limbs and hair, the composition literally and metaphorically soars. The inspiration behind Frishmuth's approach is undoubtedly Rodin, whose careful distortion of figures to express emotion is one of the signal achievements of modern sculpture.

At slightly over 65 inches tall, the Currier's is the larger of two versions of The Crest of the Wave cast by the Gorham Company of Providence, Rhode Island. Frishmuth did not usually offer different sized versions of her compositions, but the critical and commercial success that followed the enlargement of her statuette The Vine (1921, enlarged version 1923) prompted her to make larger renditions of a number of works of the 1920s, including The Crest of the Wave. In 1928 both versions were offered for sale in Gorham's important catalogue Famous Small Bronzes, featuring work by noted American sculptors. The Crest of the Wave was also sold through New York's Grand Central Art Galleries, where in 1929 it retailed at a relatively costly $ 2500.

The Currier's cast of The Crest of the Wave was obtained from the Grand Central Art Galleries after appearing in the museum's inaugural exhibition, in October 1929. Only the second object purchased for the permanent collections, it has remained on view in the museum court for more than seven decades. At present, it remains the museum's major example of twentieth-century American academic sculpture.

VSD

REFERENCES

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

Ilene Susan Fort, with contributions by Mary L. Lenihan, Marlene Park, Susan Rather, et al. The Figure in American Sculpture: A Question of Modernity. Ex. cat. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1995.