WILLIAM HUNT DIEDERICH, CIRCA 1908

Diederich and Paul Manship, a fellow student at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art and future Art Deco sculptor, spent the summer of 1908 traveling through the south of Spain. Earlier, when still a teenager, Diederich had spent a year working as a cowboy in the American Southwest and developed a particular affinity for this kind of life. Scenes of matadors and bullfighting seem to have captured his artistic imagination, epitomizing his preference for subject matter involving figures and animals engaged in pitched combat or play. For the decoration of this rare linen, Diederich has compressed the action of this dangerous dance between the matadors and the enraged bulls into an oval composition, connecting the figures and animals through curvacious lines and graceful silhouettes. The present lot is one of the few extant examples of Diederich's work in fabrics.