Hunting nymph

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Hunting nymph in 1929 on Pariser Platz in front of the French Embassy
Hunting nymph by Walter Schott at its current location in the Humboldthain park

The sculpture Hunting Nymph (today mostly called " Diana with greyhounds ") is a sculpture in the Humboldthain Volkspark in the Gesundbrunnen district of Berlin . The sculpture shows a naked woman (the nymph ) wearing only calf-high sandals , who has thrown a spear at full speed while jumping. She is accompanied by two hunting dogs that are also jumping.

The bronze sculpture created by Walter Schott in 1926 is around 2.50 meters high without a base. As part of the Humboldthain garden monument , it is explicitly mentioned in the Berlin list of monuments and is a listed building.

Emergence

Schott worked on the designs for this sculpture as early as the 1890s. For many years, however, he did not manage to implement his ideas to his satisfaction. In his autobiography , he wrote: “I wanted to portray a very specific moment, namely the jump while running, which I felt, but in reality never saw. Unfortunately, I had to recognize again and again that what I had dreamed of was still a long way off and had slipped away from me while I was working. "Schott also had problems with the combination of the jumping nymph and the jumping dogs:" In this work I had it is particularly difficult due to the addition of the dogs. Getting the figure going on my own wasn't the hardest part. But as soon as the dogs were united with the figure, they took away a large part of the movement. "About the ultimately countless sketches and models that had been created over the years for the hunting nymph , Schott reports:" I have ten larger than life figures, several hundred life-size dots and don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that I have created a thousand experiments in all sorts of other sizes. ”Schott finally came to a satisfactory result, and in 1926 he received the order from the City of Berlin to carry out the Figure group. The sculpture was cast in the Hermann Noack fine art foundry in Berlin-Friedenau .

The sculpture in public space

The sculpture, completed in 1928, was placed on Pariser Platz in front of the French embassy in the summer of 1929 . A year later, it was set up with a travertine base on a lawn on Gustav-Meyer-Allee in Volkspark Humboldthain. The sculpture can be traced there until 1936. After that, the city's free-standing sculptures were no longer published in the Berlin address books. In 1953 the sculpture was placed on a low sandstone plinth in the newly designed rose garden of the Humboldthain .

From autumn 1994 to April 1995 the hunting nymph was restored at the art foundry Hermann Noack, which had already cast the sculpture almost 70 years earlier. In 2013, the metal surface was cleaned and exposed with subsequent wax preservation.

In his autobiography, Schott himself describes the sculpture exclusively as the “hunting nymph” or “hunting nymph with two dogs”. An interpretation as Diana comes from more recent times.

  • Schott's signature on the base plate

  • Signature of the fine art foundry Noack

  • Detail of a sandal showing floral shapes.

Others

The sculpture was made in a similar form by Schott as a 50 cm high statuette .

Remarks

  1. ↑ The interpretation of Endlich and Wurlitzer ( Sculptures and Monuments in Berlin , p. 188) that the "Roman goddess of hunting [...] is shown in a race with two greyhounds, with [...] expressive gestures" is incorrect in several ways.

supporting documents

  1. ^ Walter Schott: An artist's life and social memories from the imperial era. Carl Reissner, Dresden 1930, p. 240.
  2. ^ A b Stefanie Endlich, Bernd Wurlitzer: Sculptures and Monuments in Berlin. Stapp, Berlin 1990, p. 188.
  3. ^ Sculpture in Berlin: Diana with greyhounds, 1926 ( Memento from March 19, 2014 in the web archive archive.today )
  4. ↑ Entry in the Berlin State Monument List
  5. ^ Walter Schott: An artist's life and social memories from the imperial era. Carl Reissner, Dresden 1930, p. 241.
  6. ^ Walter Schott: An artist's life and social memories from the imperial era. Carl Reissner, Dresden 1930, pp. 243–244.
  7. ^ Walter Schott: An artist's life and social memories from the imperial era. Carl Reissner, Dresden 1930, p. 242.
  8. ^ Gisela Schlemmer: Walter Schott (1861-1938): Life and work of a Berlin sculptor of the Wilhelmine era . Free University of Berlin, Berlin 1994, p. 41.
  9. ↑ The ride. Journal of the Berliner Verkehrs-Aktiengesellschaft , Volume 1, No. 14 (August 1, 1929), p. 3.
  10. ^ Berlin municipal art maintenance. In: Art and Artists. Illustrated monthly for fine arts , 28th year, issue 3 (March 1930), p. 120 ( online ).
  11. ^ Berlin address book 1937: Urban free-standing pictures
  12. ↑ Diana is hunting in the rose garden again . In: Berliner Zeitung of April 12, 1995.
  13. ↑ Haber & Brandner metal restoration, references: bronze sculpture "Diana with greyhounds"
  14. ^ Action house Auctionata: Walter Schott, Diana with greyhounds, bronze, Berlin, 1929 ( Memento from October 27, 2016 in the web archive archive.today )

Web links

Commons : Hunting Nymph  - Collection of Images

Coordinates: 52 ° 32 ′ 52.1 ″  N , 13 ° 23 ′ 12 ″  E