Bessie Potter Vonnoh

(1872-1955)

Day Dreams 10 5/8in (27cm) high

Footnotes

Provenance
Private collection, Florida.
Acquired by the present owner from the above.

Exhibited
Chicago, Illinois, The Art Institute of Chicago, Eleventh Annual Exhibition of Oil Paintings and Sculpture by American Artists, November 15-December 18, 1898, plaster model exhibited.
New York, Society of American Artists, Twenty-first Annual Exhibition of the Society of American Artists, March 25-April 29, 1899, plaster model exhibited.
Chicago, Illinois, The Art Institute of Chicago, Sculpture by Bessie Potter Vonnoh, 1914, plaster model exhibited.
Cincinnati, Ohio, Cincinnati Art Museum, Bessie Potter Vonnoh: Sculptor of Women, June 6-September 6, 2009, plaster model exhibited.

Literature
J. Conner, J. Rosenkranz, Rediscoveries in American Sculpture: Studio Works, 1893-1939, Austin, Texas, 1989, p. 105.
C.S. Rubinstein, American Women Sculptors: A History of Women Working in Three Dimensions, Boston, Massachusetts, 1990, p. 114.
P.B. Freedman, R.J. Frank, A Checklist of American Sculpture at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, 1992, p. 181, no. 395, another example illustrated.
J. Aronson, Bessie Potter Vonnoh: Sculptor of Women, Cincinnati, Ohio, 2008, pp. 92-96, pl. 9, another example illustrated.

There are five known versions of Day Dreams, though the Roman Bronze Works ledger records four castings. The first casting (No. I), which was acquired by The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. in 1910, and the present work (No. II) were both produced by Roman Bronze Works in 1907. The third casting (No. III) was produced in 1912 and is in the collection of the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut. Roman Bronze Works records the fourth version having been produced in 1913. The fourth and fifth examples are numbered indistinctly—one of these is in the collection of the Huntsville Museum of Art in Huntsville, Alabama and the other is in a private collection in Washington, D.C.

Bessie Potter Vonnoh's Day Dreams is one of the most sophisticated works in the artist's oeuvre and exemplifies her perceptive abilities as a modeler. In the present work, Vonnoh constructed remarkably complex relationships between composition, texture, and pattern while crafting a dynamic narrative. She suggests interior space and atmosphere in a new way. Unlike her earlier works where her technique often appears informal to achieve an emphasis on the fundamental desires and emotions that typically characterizes her subjects, Day Dreams relies heavily on its controlled handling and its complexities in design to present a refined cultural construct that was popularly explored in late 19th century American and European art.

The subject of Day Dreams is two elegant young women lounging on a sofa pleasantly absorbed in their thoughts. According to art historian Julie Aronson, Potter acquired the inspiration for the poses of her two figures, one seated upright and the other reclining against her, from a depiction of two figures of goddesses from the east pediment of the Parthenon sculpted by a 5th century Greek sculptor (British Museum, London) (Julie Aronson, Bessie Potter Vonnoh: Sculptor of Women, Cincinnati, Ohio, 2008, p. 93-94). Potter was so enamored with the marble sculpture that she displayed a photograph of the work on the mantle in her studio, but when she acquired this photograph is unknown. Vonnoh would have seen this depiction of the two goddesses along with the rest of the famed Elgin Marbles a year before modeling Day Dreams at the British Museum while she was in England and would have also had access to a plaster cast of this relic at the Art Institute of Chicago.

In 1893, Vonnoh saw the work of Paul Troubetzkoy (1866-1938) at the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition and his small statuettes undoubtedly had an impact on her artistic style as well. Unlike many of Potter's other works, the primary viewpoint of Day Dreams is purely frontal and the rear of the work is considered secondary. Decorative elements of the work include references to antiquity and to the 19th century Aesthetic Movement, where formal decorative qualities took precedence over narrative content. The ornamented settee that the two women rest on is a type of Greek revival design in furniture with cornucopia on the arms and lions-paw feet. Furthermore, the dresses of both figures are free-flowing and Neoclassical in design.

While there are formal decorative and design elements evident in Day Dreams, Vonnoh also creates a sense of narrative between the two women. The subject echoes what other American Impressionist painters of the period where focused on depicting—modern women at leisure in their everyday lives. There are several roses and a book that the two women were reading before they became engrossed with their bright and love filled dreams of the future is most likely a romance novel or poetry and the roses serve as a symbol of their musings of love. This scenario that Vonnoh has created comes from the popular theme of reading aloud where the words of one young woman transport another woman or a group of women into a state of reverie.

Vonnoh first exhibited the tinted plaster model for Day Dreams at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1898 and then again in 1899 at the Society of American Artists in New York. Day Dreams has generated a great deal of interest among art historians and collectors alike for its genius and for the discussion it raises about female companionship and upper-class women whose lives were centered around leisure and marriage during the late 19th and early 20th century. In examining her work today, many art historians cite Day Dreams as a milestone for the artist. At this stage in her career, Potter had officially found her personal style and had branded herself by the many recognizable qualities that would characterize her work for the remainder of her career.