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Lot Essay
'I love animals first, last and always. Animals seemed to me truly plastic. They possess such supple unspoiled rhythms'.
– William Hunt Diederich
Richard Armstrong writes, 'Diederich was well enough established in Paris to exhibit work in both the 1910 and 1911 spring Salons, and a large bronze group entitled Greyhounds received great acclaim in the 1913 Salon d'Automne. He existed comfortably in the artist's milieu of Paris, moving freely between French artists, the Polish-born Elie Nadelman, and the Russian Alexander Archipenko (in later years in New York, Nadelman and Archipenko again became Diederich's good friends). Archipenko had introduced him to a young Russian art student, Mary de Anders ("Maruschka"), whom Diederich married in 1911. Sometime after the commencement of World War I, the Diederichs moved to the United States, settling in New York. The somewhat academic strain of Diederich's aesthetic, most completely expressed in the bronze casts he produced after returning to the States, brought him critical approval and patronage. Soon after arriving in New York, he galvanized a group of friends into helping him place a cast of Greyhounds on a vacant pedestal in Central Park as an offering to the city. Officials regarded the act as trespassing; the piece was unceremoniously removed and damaged by an indignant constabulary. Diederich's nighttime Bohemian prank, reported widely in the local press, garnered useful publicity for his work, which was being featured at the time in a midtown gallery show' (R. Armstrong, op. cit., n.p.).
The larger version of Greyhounds which was first exhibited in Central Park in 1913 is in the collection of Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, Bentonville, Arkansas. Other examples of the present model are in the collections of the Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin and the Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington.
– William Hunt Diederich
Richard Armstrong writes, 'Diederich was well enough established in Paris to exhibit work in both the 1910 and 1911 spring Salons, and a large bronze group entitled Greyhounds received great acclaim in the 1913 Salon d'Automne. He existed comfortably in the artist's milieu of Paris, moving freely between French artists, the Polish-born Elie Nadelman, and the Russian Alexander Archipenko (in later years in New York, Nadelman and Archipenko again became Diederich's good friends). Archipenko had introduced him to a young Russian art student, Mary de Anders ("Maruschka"), whom Diederich married in 1911. Sometime after the commencement of World War I, the Diederichs moved to the United States, settling in New York. The somewhat academic strain of Diederich's aesthetic, most completely expressed in the bronze casts he produced after returning to the States, brought him critical approval and patronage. Soon after arriving in New York, he galvanized a group of friends into helping him place a cast of Greyhounds on a vacant pedestal in Central Park as an offering to the city. Officials regarded the act as trespassing; the piece was unceremoniously removed and damaged by an indignant constabulary. Diederich's nighttime Bohemian prank, reported widely in the local press, garnered useful publicity for his work, which was being featured at the time in a midtown gallery show' (R. Armstrong, op. cit., n.p.).
The larger version of Greyhounds which was first exhibited in Central Park in 1913 is in the collection of Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, Bentonville, Arkansas. Other examples of the present model are in the collections of the Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin and the Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington.