Wheeler Williams

(1897-1972)

Fall 40 1/2in high (102.9cm high)

Footnotes

Provenance
Private collection, California.
By descent to the present owner.

Literature
Architectural League of New York, Year Book - Architectural League of New York, New York, 1936, vol. 50, p. 79, another example of the Four Seasons listed.
Brookgreen Gardens, Sculpture by Wheeler Williams, exhibition catalogue, Brookgreen Gardens, South Carolina, 1937, n.p., another example of the Four Seasons illustrated.
Wheeler Williams, American Sculptors Series: No. 1, Wheeler Williams, New York, 1947, p. 27, another example of the Four Seasons illustrated.
James T. White & Company, The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography: Being the History of the United States as Illustrated in the Lives of the Founders, Builders, and Defenders of the Republic, and of the Men and Women who are Doing the Work and Moulding the Thought of the Present Time, New York, 1967, vol. 57, p. 478, another example of the Four Seasons listed.
Southern Accents Press, Gardens of the South, New York, 1985, p. 181, another example of the Four Seasons listed.
J. Myerson, J. Hudson, International Interiors 7, London, 2000, pp. 70-71, another example of the Four Seasons illustrated.
L.D. Rosenfeld, A Century of American Sculpture: The Roman Bronze Works Foundry, Atglen, Pennsylvania, 2002, p. 258, another example of the Four Seasons listed.
W.R. Brown, Collection Highlights from the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, Tennessee, 2004, pp. 17, 21, no. 11, another example of the Four Seasons listed.
C.V. West, M.D. Binnicker, A History of Tennessee Arts: Creating Traditions, Expanding Horizons, Knoxville, Tennessee, p. 68, another example of the Four Seasons listed.

The present work is part of the Four Seasons series sculpted by Wheeler Williams. Another example of Fall sculpted in Carrara marble can be found in the Four Seasons in the collection of the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, Tennessee.

Wheeler Williams was born in Chicago, Illinois and received his education at Yale University and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France. He was active in many sculpture societies in America and abroad and testified strongly against modern art movements in the United States Congress during the early 1950s, when Abstract Expressionism was beginning to be widely shown and regarded as un-American by conservatives. Among Williams' notable commissions were the entrance to the Holland Tunnel in New York, the pediment for the Interstate Commerce Building in Washington, and his stylized statues of the four seasons. The present work, Fall, cast in bronze is one of four in the Four Seasons series and is a superb example of Williams' bold naturalistic style. Characteristic of Williams' sculptures, the present work is constructed with clean lines that align to form the figure's graceful facial features, arms, and drapery that hangs from the figure's body. Fall along with Winter, Spring, and Summer were also produced in fired porcelain in a seperate series known as The Four Seasons of Life of The Life of the Iris and was awarded a gold medal at the Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dan la vie Moderne in 1937.