Paul Howard Manship

(1885-1966)

Diana 36 in. (91.4 cm.) high

Footnotes

Provenance
By descent within the family of the artist to the present owner.

Literature
A.E. Gallatin, "An American Sculptor: Paul Manship," The Studio: An Illustrated Magazine of Fine and Applied Art, London, 1921, vol. 82, p. 139, another example illustrated.
"Unusual and Interesting: Strong Work by an American Sculptor," The Illustrated London News, August 6, 1921, vol. CLIX, p. 198, another example illustrated.
The National Sculpture Society, Exhibition of American Sculpture, exhibition catalogue, New York, April 14-August 1, 1923, p. 160, another example illustrated.
"'Diana,' by Paul Manship," The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, New York, April 29, 1923, vol. 83, no. 118, p. 2B, another example illustrated.
"Architectural Sculpture," The Journal of the American Institute of Architects, New York, July 1923, vol. XI, no. 7, p. 281, another example illustrated.
Arts & Decoration, New York, March 1925, vol. XXII, p. 33, another example illustrated.
P. Redd, "Carte Exhibition Eclipses Others in Pittsburgh, City Planning Show is Not Sufficiently Clear for Studies, Pittsburgh Views in Photographic Salons Attractive, Institute Buys Manship Works," The Pittsburgh Sunday Post, March 15, 1925, no. 55, sec. 6, p. 7, another example illustrated.
"Manship Gets Medal: Sculptor Prize Award is Announced by Art Committe Jury," The Philadelphia Inquirer, May 7, 1925, vol. 192, no. 127, sec. bc, p. 11, another example listed.
"A New Diana," The Philadelphia Inquirer, October 31, 1926, vol. 195, no. 123, gravure. sec., p. 2, another example illustrated.
P. Vitry, Paul Manship: Sculpteur Américain, Paris, 1927, pp. 27-28, 33, 42-44, pl. 36, another example illustrated.
"Speed and Rhythm in Superb Sculpture at Toronto Art Gallery," The Toronto Daily Star, April 21, 1928, p. 7, another example illustrated.
"Philadelphia's Outdoor Sculpture Show an Example to Other Cities," The Art Digest, Hopewell, New Jersey, Mid-May 1928, vol. II, no. 16, p. 3, another example illustrated.
C.H. Bonte, "Art Alliance has a Sculpture Show, Fifth Outdoor Exhibition is Now to be Seen in Rittenhouse Square, Graphic Sketch Club's Annual and Some Block Prints by E.H. Suydam," The Philadelphia Inquirer, May 13, 1928, vol. 198, no. 134, sec. so, p. 6, another example listed.
"Sculpture, Common Sense and the Public," Art and Archaeology, Washington, June 1928, vol. XXV, no. 6, "p. 306, another example illustrated.
C.R. Mason, "Sculpture-In-The-Open-Air," The American Magazine of Art, Washington, D.C., July 1928, vol. XIX, no. 7, p. 389, another example listed.
The California Palace of the Legion of Honor, Contemporary American Sculpture, exhibition catalogue, San Francisco, 1929, pp. 221, 223, another example illustrated.
Averell House, Sculpture by Paul Manship, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1933, pp. 10, 12, no. 13, another example illustrated.
G.W. Longstreet, M. Carter, General Catalogue, Boston, 1935, pp. 68-69, another example listed.
L. Mechlin, "Mythological Ideas are Dominant: Persons Who Have Achieved Fame are Presented Through Portrait Work in Bronze, Marble and Plaster-Beasts and Birds are Represented-Landscapes in Women's City Club Exhibit," The Evening Star, Washington, D.C., January 9, 1937, no. 33,856, sec. B, p. 3, another example illustrated.
The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Special Exhibition of Sculpture by Paul Manship, exhibition catalogue, Washington, D.C., 1937, n.p., no. 58, another example listed.
The National Sculpture Society, Paul Manship, American Sculptors Series, Book 2, New York, 1947, pp. 16-17, another example illustrated.
E. Murtha, Paul Manship, New York, 1957, pp. 14, 18, 161-64, 195, cat. nos. 138, 166, 182, pl. 26, another example illustrated.
Smithsonian Institution, A Retrospective Exhibition of Sculpture by Paul Manship, exhibition catalogue, Washington, D.C., 1958, n.p., no. 38, another example illustrated on the front cover.
D.E. Finley, W. Hancock, R.C. Murphy, Paul Manship, exhibition catalogue, Washington, D.C., 1966, pp. 2-3, another example illustrated.
L.H. Dodd, Ph.D., L.H.D., Golden Moments in American Sculpture, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1967, p. 73, another example listed.
W. Craven, Sculpture in America, Cranbury, New Jersey, 1968, pp. 567, 697, another example listed.
C. Baraschi, Sculpture of the Nude, London, 1970, p. 251, fig. 247, another example illustrated.
W.H. Gerdts, The Great American Nude: A History in Art, New York, 1974, pp. 182, 221, figs. 9-10, another example illustrated.
C.C. Vermeule, III, W. Cahn, R.V.N. Hadley, Sculpture in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, 1977, pp. 165-66, 186, no. 210, another example illustrated.
R.V.N. Hadley, E. Sinaiko, ed., Museums Discovered: The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Florida, 1981, pp. 192-93, another example illustrated.
W. Kloss, Treasures from the National Museum of American Art, exhibition catalogue, Washington, D.C., 1985, p. 227, another example illustrated.
Minnesota Museum of Art, Paul Manship: Changing Taste in America, exhibition catalogue, St. Paul, Minnesota, 1985, pp. 23, 30, 72-75, 98, 101, 106, 117, 139, 156, no. 45, another example illustrated.
V. Colby, "Paul Manship, Sculptor: 1885-1966," The Windsor Chronicle, Windsor, Vermont, April 25, 1986, vol. XI, no. 76, p. 9, another example illustrated.
R. Netsky, "Once and Future Art: New Show Examines Century's Changing Sense of Aesthetics," Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, New York, August 23, 1987, p. 3D, another example illustrated.
H. Rand, Paul Manship, exhibition catalogue, 1989, Washington, D.C., pp. 73-79, figs. 64-67, another example illustrated.
J. Conner, J. Rosenkranz, Rediscoveries in American Sculpture: Studio Works, 1893-1939, Austin, 1989, pp. 136, 138, 142, 205, another example listed.
J. Manship, Paul Manship, New York, 1989, pp. 78-79, 83, 91, 94, 100-03, 111, 113, 133, 215, figs. 66, 92, 93, another example illustrated and details illustrated on the inside front and back covers.
S.E. Menconi, Uncommon Spirit: Sculpture in America 1800-1940, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1989, pp. 82-83, no. 56, another example illustrated.
S. Rather, Archaism, Modernism, and the Art of Paul Manship, Austin, 1993, pp. 160-62, 265, fig. 94, another example illustrated.
H.T. Goldfarb, Passionate Acts in Greek Art and Myth, exhibition catalogue, Boston, 1993, pp. 44-45, another example listed.
F. Smyth, J. Warnement, B. Gessner, eds., Sculpture: An Illustrated Catalogue, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1994, pp. 143, 271, another example illustrated.
H.T. Goldfarb, The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum: A Companion Guide and History, New Haven, Connecticut, 1995, p. 37, another example illustrated.
P. Curtis, Sculpture 1900-1945: After Rodin, New York, 1999, pp. 228-29, 282, another example illustrated.
J. Day, "Sharing the Spotlight: Brookgreen's Sculptures Grab Glory in Rockefeller Center," The State, Columbia, South Carolina, August 15, 1999, no. 227, p. F8, another example illustrated.
D. Finn, ed., 20th-Century American Sculpture in the White House Garden, Japan, 2000, pp. 35, 135, another example illustrated.
D.B. Dearinger, ed., Paintings and Sculpture in the Collection of the National Academy of Design, Volume I 1826-1925, New York, 2004, pp. 378, 635, another example listed.
J. Marter, ed., The Grove Encyclopedia of American Art, New York, 2011, vol. 3, p. 239, another example illustrated.
J.D. Burke, W. Adelson, A.L. Duncan, Saint Louis: The Saligman Collection, Paintings, Sculpture, Decorative Arts, 2012, pp. 108, 114-16, 206, another example illustrated.
E. Heuer, American Made: Paintings and Sculpture From the Demell Jacobsen Collection, exhibition catalogue, Lewes, United Kingdom, 2022, p. 266, another example listed.

Other examples of this version can be found in the collections of the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (accession no. 25.3.3), the Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine (accession no. 1991.004), the Columbus Museum of Art (object ID 1980.024), the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (object no. SIIW7), the Minnesota Museum of American Art, St. Paul (accession no. 66.14.103a), and the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame, Indiana (accession no. 1952.019).

Paul Manship's Diana is a tour de force within the artist's oeuvre that resides prominently between the frontier of modernism and the traditions of archaic design. Manship's synthesis of the academic principles of sculpture and the interpretation of classical subject matter with fresh, innovative techniques of design distinguished him from his contemporaries. As a result, Manship rose to become one of the most preeminent sculptors of the twentieth century, attracting both commercial success and praise from critics throughout his career. As Dr. Susan Rather notes, "His modernism lay in the greater importance of form than subject to the effect of his works and the provocative combination of stylization and naturalism; his conceptualized treatment of form, in particular, signified originality." (S. Rather, Archaism, Modernism, and the Art of Paul Manship, Austin, 1993, p. 106) Diana brilliantly exhibits these qualities that characterize Manship's most accomplished work and visually manifests his fascination with the myth of Diana and Acteon.

Born in Minnesota in 1885, Manship eventually left home at the age of nineteen for New York where he would go on to study alongside renowned sculptors of the period, such as Hermon Atkins MacNeil (1866-1947), Charles Grafly (1862-1929), and Solon Hannibal Borglum (1868-1922). From 1908 to 1909, Manship worked under the respected Beaux-Arts sculptor, Isidore Konti (1862-1938) and under Konti's tutelage, he exponentially developed his techniques as a modeler. Konti persuaded Manship to pursue admission to the American Academy in Rome and to compete for the esteemed Prix de Rome awarded to aspiring sculptors by the Rinehardt Fund of the Peabody Institute of Baltimore. Konti, a recipient of a Rome prize himself while a student in Vienna, understood the importance that such a venture would have on the young artist. At Konti's insistence, Manship entered the competition for the prize in 1909, despite his initial lack of interest in studying in Rome at the time, as he and his peers collectively considered the city irrelevant in the rise of Paris as the art center of the modern world. To both Manship and Konti's delight, Manship won the Prix de Rome with his relief Rest After Toil and moved to Rome later that year to begin his studies at the Academy.

During his three-year stay at the Academy, Manship thrived in his studies and took advantage of opportunities to travel through Italy and Greece, building a visual diary of forms that would inspire his work in years to come. In Italy, Manship studied the work of Michelangelo and Donatello and made observations of the Pompeian frescoes. In Greece, he bore witness to some of the most recent archeological discoveries being made and later traveled to the eastern Mediterranean in search of archaic artforms. At each site Manship visited, he was drawn to the simplicity of forms and the balance of decorative stylizations, especially those found in designs of hair and drapery. He was particularly impressed by the graceful qualities of design found in both the maidens he saw in the Pompeian frescoes and in Greek figurative sculpture. While many Western art authorities considered the archaic akin to the primitive, Manship was the first American sculptor to "exalt archaic principles over the classical art of Phidias and Polykleitos. Egypt provided another form of antiquity, and eventually he absorbed influences from the Minoan and Assyrian cultures, as well as from Gandharan and Kushan Greco-Indian sculpture." (H. Rand, Paul Manship, Washington, D.C., 1989, p. 20)

After completing his studies at the Academy, Manship returned to New York in 1912 to find an audience in favor of his developing style, and commissions soon followed. His education at the American Academy left him with an acute awareness of the classical subjects that formed the canon of art history that proceeded him and the imagery and characters he discovered in literary works, mythology and exotic, foreign cultures would inspire much of his oeuvre. Among the many subjects Manship studied, he took a great deal of interest in the Greek myth of Artemis and Actaeon and his exploration of depicting the fabled, wrathful meeting of these two characters in the round would lead to one of the most significant sculptures produced in Manship's career.

Diana, equated with the Greek goddess Artemis, was a woodland goddess of hunting and archery in Roman and Hellenistic religions and was considered a patroness and defender of the countryside, nature, wildlife, childbirth, crossroads, the night, and the moon. She also forcibly maintained her virginity and punished those who would violate her virgin state. Diana's mythology incorporated variants of earlier stories of Artemis, including the myth of Actaeon, the famed and ill destined young hunter and son to the priestly herdsman, Aristaeus. One day while hunting on Mt. Citheron, Actaeon came upon Diana at her bath. Offended by seeing her nude and to prevent Actaeon's boasting of his chance encounter, Diana cursed him and turned him into a stag. His hounds, trained to hunt and unable to recognize him, inevitably attacked and devoured him.

Manship began contemplating the myth of Diana and Acteon as early as 1915, producing sketches of the mythological characters during his first summer in Cornish, New Hampshire. He drafted the figure of Diana in various pencil studies, evolving his composition from a bow-like female form bearing similarities to Augustus Saint-Gaudens' (1848-1907) interpretation of the huntress to a uniquely free flowing figure complimented by separate designs of muscular hounds with gritted teeth. Rather than have Diana balanced gracefully on an elegantly designed pedestal as Gaudens did for several of his versions of Diana, Manship chose to depict Diana and her hound in flight, supported by the fronds that Manship designed to serve as their backdrop. Diana and her hound are characterized by smooth surfaces and Manship uses fluid, minimalistic lines to design their facial features and hair. Furthermore, Manship thoughtfully angled the dog's head toward Diana's hand and bow while its eyes center on Diana's expression, visually pulling the viewers focus in a triangular pattern. The resulting image produced in Diana masterfully exhibits Manship's ingenious style and composition.

Diana was produced with a companion piece, a sculpture of the ill-fated Acteon, of comparable size. "These pieces represent Manship at his most characteristic, with their use of mythological subjects, nude figures in motion, stylized animals and plants, and highly decorative patterns in which the voids are as calculated for effect as the solids. These two pieces have always been—with the Dancer and Gazelles—Manship's most popular works." (J. Manship, Paul Manship, New York, 1989, p. 101) Indeed, as Harry Rand astutely remarked, "Diana embodied the best of Manship's art, the highest aspirations of archaism and contemporary academicism, the promise for a legitimate and potent alternative to modernism, and an unsurpassable performance in bronzework. The piece left Walker Hancock [(1901-1998)], among others, dazzled by what was 'possibly the supreme example of the fluidity of line which Manship was able to achieve...Its lightness takes every advantage of bronze as a medium in contrast to many later works in which the emphasis is on solidity and volume.'" (H. Rand, Paul Manship, pp. 76-77)

In his creation of both Diana and Actaeon, Paul Manship affirmed his reputation as one of the twentieth century's master sculptors, and Diana became one of his most popular models. Manship would go on to create additional versions of Diana, but the present version is considered the original and remained the smallest version the artist completed on the subject. As the Art Deco style rose in popularity in the 1920s, so did taste for Manship's work. Manship's body of work represents some of the greatest contributions to American Art Deco design and Diana sits proudly in its lexicon, portraying the preservation of original, Neo-Classical forms with a uniquely Modern style.