John Singer Sargent (1856-1925)
John Singer Sargent (1856-1925)

'Study for Israel and the Law', A Bronze Group

Details
John Singer Sargent (1856-1925)
'Study for Israel and the Law', A Bronze Group
inscribed 'JSS'
6½ in. (16.5 cm.) high, golden brown patina
Provenance
Maxwell Galleries, San Francisco, California.
Robert Schoelkopf Gallery, New York, New York, 1962.
Joseph H. Hirshhorn, New York, New York, 1962.
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 1966.
Exhibited
Washington, D.C., The Corcoran Gallery of Art, The Private World of John Singer Sargent, April 1964-January 1965, no. 164, illustrated
Cleveland, Ohio, The Cleveland Museum of Art, n.d.

Lot Essay

This work was executed circa 1909.

In 1890, John Singer Sargent was commissioned to decorate the long hall of the Boston Public Library with scenes chronicling the history of religion from the origins of Western faiths to the rise and triumph of Christianity. This ambitious project would take Sargent over twenty-five years to complete. The sculpture Study for Israel and the Law is a study in bronze for the lunette Israel and the Law installed in 1916 in the center of the long hall's eastern face. Originally modeled in terracotta and later cast in bronze, this is the only know example in Sargent's Boston Public Library murals of a painted composition that was cast in three-dimensions.

Mary Crawford Volk writes about the bronze, "of the six painted lunette-shaped compositions [in the Boston Public Library], of which Israel and the Law is one, no other sculptures are known, nor are there any for the other paintings in the program either. Not incidentally, the painted version of Israel and the Law, as executed, was carried out in a monchrome palette that recalls sculpture, distinct from the richer color of the other lunettes." (Mary Crawford Volk, letter to consignor dated 21 March 1997)