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Lot Essay
A virtuoso rendering of the human form, this magnificent sculpture was created by American artist William Couper during his sojourn in Florence in the last quarter of the 19th century. Couper was born in Virginia, studied at the Cooper Institute in New York, and travelled to Munich in 1874. The following year, he left for Italy, where he joined a thriving contingent of expatriate American sculptors in Florence who had come to study the works of the Renaissance and Baroque periods as well as those of their European contemporaries. Surrounded by the likes of famed American sculptor, Thomas Ball (1819-1911), to whom he was an apprentice, Couper thrived in the Tuscan capital producing portrait busts, mythological and allegorical figures, small relief sculptures and so-called “ideal” works, including the present marble. All were fashionable with affluent tourists on the Grand Tour in Italy in the late 19th century.
With her dramatic pose, flowing drapery and delicate trail of flowers, the present figure exemplifies the finest work in Couper’s Italian production. A plaster version of 'The Coming of Spring’ was shown in Paris and London in 1885 and at Tiffany & Co. in New York in 1886, before which it was described by a Florence-based reporter for the Boston Transcript as “a beautiful floating or flying figure, bearing a wreath of flowers. It has just been cast in plaster, and is for Tiffany of New York…The exquisite nymph…is so delicate that one wonders if she touches the flowers and leaves over which she is being borne by a light zephyr” (G. Couper, An American Sculptor on the Grand Tour The Life and Works of William Couper (1853-1942), Los Angeles, 1988, p. 76). A full scale version of the marble is in the National Memorial Park at Falls Church, Virginia. An additional version, identical in size to the present lot, was sold Christie’s, London, 15 May 1997, lot 391.
The present marble is first documented in the collection of James John (J.J.) Hagerman (1839-1909), the great American industrialist who amassed a significant fortune through the shipping, iron, railroad and mining industries. He traveled to Europe for his declining health in the 1880s, and it is possible that he may have encountered Couper’s work at that time. American sculptors of the era operated important workshops which were frequented by wealthy foreign tourists of the age who could commission portrait busts or full-scale marble works from the plaster reductions on display in the artists’ ateliers. The existence of two half-scale marbles of 'The Coming of Spring’ suggests that Couper, too, catered to this elite voyaging clientele, creating sumptuous figures that perfectly evoke the exuberance of the age.
With her dramatic pose, flowing drapery and delicate trail of flowers, the present figure exemplifies the finest work in Couper’s Italian production. A plaster version of 'The Coming of Spring’ was shown in Paris and London in 1885 and at Tiffany & Co. in New York in 1886, before which it was described by a Florence-based reporter for the Boston Transcript as “a beautiful floating or flying figure, bearing a wreath of flowers. It has just been cast in plaster, and is for Tiffany of New York…The exquisite nymph…is so delicate that one wonders if she touches the flowers and leaves over which she is being borne by a light zephyr” (G. Couper, An American Sculptor on the Grand Tour The Life and Works of William Couper (1853-1942), Los Angeles, 1988, p. 76). A full scale version of the marble is in the National Memorial Park at Falls Church, Virginia. An additional version, identical in size to the present lot, was sold Christie’s, London, 15 May 1997, lot 391.
The present marble is first documented in the collection of James John (J.J.) Hagerman (1839-1909), the great American industrialist who amassed a significant fortune through the shipping, iron, railroad and mining industries. He traveled to Europe for his declining health in the 1880s, and it is possible that he may have encountered Couper’s work at that time. American sculptors of the era operated important workshops which were frequented by wealthy foreign tourists of the age who could commission portrait busts or full-scale marble works from the plaster reductions on display in the artists’ ateliers. The existence of two half-scale marbles of 'The Coming of Spring’ suggests that Couper, too, catered to this elite voyaging clientele, creating sumptuous figures that perfectly evoke the exuberance of the age.