Lot Essay
Born in Almonte, Canada, to American parents, Robert Tait McKenzie (d. 1938) studied medicine at McGill University, Montreal, where he won numerous awards for his athletic and sporting abilities, as well as later becoming a lecturer on Anatomy at McGill's Medical School. Concurrent with his passions for medicine and sport was his profound interest in the arts and he went on to lecture in Artistic Anatomy at the Montreal Art Association, at Harvard University and, in 1904, for the Olympic Lecture Course at the St Louis Exposition.
A member of the American Federation of Arts, Tait McKenzie took up sculpture in 1902, his first major work being the present study of The Sprinter. Earlier in the same year, with his Masks of Expression, illustrating the processes of fatigue, he had demonstrated the possibilities of modelling in clay observations made on the running track. The Sprinter was Tait McKenzie's first attempt at modelling a figure of an athlete 'in the round', something which, for some time, he had been trying in vain to get established sculptors to execute. It was intended that, using the pose of the 'crouch' or 'hand-spring' method of starting, first used by Charles Cherill in 1888 and subsequently adopted universally, the study would show the ideal average form of a sprinter. In determining what the correct proportions for such a figure should be, Tait McKenzie had at his disposal the measurements and statistics of seventy-four of the fastest American sprinters, recently collected and compiled by Dr Paul C. Phillips of Amherst College.
Presumably due to insufficient experience in the construction and placing of armatures, it was not until his third attempt at The Sprinter that Tait McKenzie succeeded in modelling a figure which could support its own weight. However, once completed, the work achieved instant artistic success: It was shown at the Society of American Artists' exhibition in 1902; in 1903 at the Royal Academy and in 1904 at the Paris Salon. The model was edited in two sizes: 4½ in. and the present larger reduction.
A member of the American Federation of Arts, Tait McKenzie took up sculpture in 1902, his first major work being the present study of The Sprinter. Earlier in the same year, with his Masks of Expression, illustrating the processes of fatigue, he had demonstrated the possibilities of modelling in clay observations made on the running track. The Sprinter was Tait McKenzie's first attempt at modelling a figure of an athlete 'in the round', something which, for some time, he had been trying in vain to get established sculptors to execute. It was intended that, using the pose of the 'crouch' or 'hand-spring' method of starting, first used by Charles Cherill in 1888 and subsequently adopted universally, the study would show the ideal average form of a sprinter. In determining what the correct proportions for such a figure should be, Tait McKenzie had at his disposal the measurements and statistics of seventy-four of the fastest American sprinters, recently collected and compiled by Dr Paul C. Phillips of Amherst College.
Presumably due to insufficient experience in the construction and placing of armatures, it was not until his third attempt at The Sprinter that Tait McKenzie succeeded in modelling a figure which could support its own weight. However, once completed, the work achieved instant artistic success: It was shown at the Society of American Artists' exhibition in 1902; in 1903 at the Royal Academy and in 1904 at the Paris Salon. The model was edited in two sizes: 4½ in. and the present larger reduction.