A RARE AND IMPORTANT 19TH CENTURY AMERICAN CARVED MARBLE FIG...

Hammer

£1,200

A RARE AND IMPORTANT 19TH CENTURY AMERICAN CARVED MARBLE FIGURE entitled
The Infant Bather, by Margaret Foley (1827-1877) the well formed figure
modelled with hands clasped, upon a naturalistic base, signed Margaret
Foley Sc Roma 1873). 90cm x 22cm. Note: In Rome, Foley began to sculpt
large marble medallion portraits—for example, a portrait of the poet
William Cullen Bryant—as well as portrait busts in the round, such as
the 1877 bust of the Transcendentalist minister Theodore Parker. One of
her most well-known medallions, created in 1866, depicted Pascuccia, a
model from Naples renowned for her beauty. With a Christian cross at her
neck and Semitic features, Pascuccia embodied the polyglot world of
nineteenth-century Rome, and Foley sold at least four versions of the
sculpture. Foley also sculpted biblical and historical subjects such as
Jeremiah and Cleopatra, both of which were exhibited at the main
Memorial Hall of the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. Foley also
exhibited a large fountain at the Exposition's Horticultural Hall,
consisting of three children supporting a marble basin adorned with
acanthus leaves (now in the Fairmount Park Horticultural Center in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania). Over the course of her career, she gained
many commissions and praise for her "crisply delineated, noble style".
The qualities that enabled Margaret Foley to transform herself from a
small-town New England school teacher to a Boston sculptor proved
equally effective in Rome. As Foley set about establishing herself, she
continued to produce cameos and medallions for a succession of patrons
who prized her work. Through her friendship with Harriet Hosmer, she met
John Gibson (1790–1866), the eminent Welsh Neoclassical sculptor
resident in Rome, who had earlier mentored Hosmer. Gibson was a member
of the Royal Academy in London and had initially been a protégé of the
famous Neoclassical Italian sculptor, Antonio Canova (1757–1822). Gibson
was immediately impressed with Foley’s work and offered her
encouragement and guidance. Foley carefully positioned herself to be
able to produce ideal pieces as well as portraits. From her vantage
point in Rome, Foley managed an active schedule of international
exhibitions, sending marble busts and bas-reliefs to London, Dublin, and
Paris, as well as New York City and Philadelphia. It has been suggest
this may be a commission or the original study for the marble fountain
for the Horticultural hall at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of
1876, as this present figure is dated 1873. Her monumental marble
fountain, known as Miss Foley’s Fountain, was exhibited separately, as
the prominent centrepiece in the Horticultural Hall. This sculpture
depicted three life-size children shaded by a covering of acanthus
leaves in which rested a basin. Designed by the architect H.J.
Schwarzmann (1846-1891), the Horticultural Hall was the smallest of the
five Centennial structures “but it was the largest conservatory built up
to that time, bigger than the famous hothouses in the Botanical Gardens
of London and Paris. Like Foley’s sculpture within it, the structure’s
Moresque style received both professional and public praise, however,
the success of the exhibition never led to any immediate further
patronage for Foley. The Horticultural Hall itself was demolished in
1955, though the fountain still resides in Philadelphia within the same
site now called the Fairmount Park Horticultural Centre. Her funds
depleted and her health failing, she returned to Europe where she was
taken by her friends, the Howitts, to Austria to recuperate, but she
died of a stroke in Meran, Austria, in 1877. Note a similar study
resides in the Novelli room Palermo, it was inherited by the Filangeri
family by the will of the Marquise of Torrersa, During the studies
carried out on the work during the restoration of this particular
figure, it was discovered that it is the sketch, slightly smaller in
size than the final work, of one of the three statues of "Bathers"
designed for a fountain to be presented at the Exhibition of
Philadelphia from 1878. The infant bather is one of 5 produced by Foley
in the 1870s, 4 of which resided in private hands (one of which being
this example) the other is known to have been destroyed.