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Lot Essay
According to Julie Aronson: "'Bird Fountain' was the first of Vonnoh's several garden figures with an adolescent female subject...The age-old association of adolescence with its efflorescene of spring made it a favorite subject for garden sculpture.
'Bird Fountain' is distinguished by its carefree joyousness. To celebrate the harmonies of the natural world, the girl smiles as a feathered friend perches courageously on her finger, her draperies blowing in the fictive breeze.
With its shallow bowl, Vonnoh's 'Bird Fountain' is a hybrid of a fountain figure and a birdbath. Birdbaths were a relatively new form of garden ornamentation. The earliest references to the birdbath seems to date to about 1912; two years later Adeline Adams deemed it 'that modern invention of the nature-lover.'" (Bessie Potter Vonnoh: Sculptor of Women, Athens, Ohio, 2008, pp. 178-79)
'Bird Fountain' is distinguished by its carefree joyousness. To celebrate the harmonies of the natural world, the girl smiles as a feathered friend perches courageously on her finger, her draperies blowing in the fictive breeze.
With its shallow bowl, Vonnoh's 'Bird Fountain' is a hybrid of a fountain figure and a birdbath. Birdbaths were a relatively new form of garden ornamentation. The earliest references to the birdbath seems to date to about 1912; two years later Adeline Adams deemed it 'that modern invention of the nature-lover.'" (Bessie Potter Vonnoh: Sculptor of Women, Athens, Ohio, 2008, pp. 178-79)