Mortimer Leo and Frieda Fanny Schiff
| Mortimer Leo and Frieda Fanny Schiff |
|---|
| Augustus Saint-Gaudens , 1884/85 |
| Bronze relief |
| 171 × 128 cm |
|
Link to the picture |
Mortimer Leo and Frieda Fanny Schiff is a double portrait in the form of a bronze relief that Augustus Saint-Gaudens created in 1884/85. Saint-Gaudens later made several copies of this work, including a marble version that is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art .
History and description
Mortimer Leo and Frieda Fanny Schiff were the children of the banker and stockbroker Jacob Henry Schiff and his wife Therese, geb. Loeb. You were born in 1876 and 1877. As early as 1882, Ernest Joseph Cassel commissioned her portrait from Saint-Gaudens, initially against the will of her father, who considered the artist too important to depict his two children. Since Cassel insisted on the idea, the relief was finally made and hung in the Schiff family home in Oyster Bay , Long Island in 1885 .
The relief is considered to be the most demanding among the relief portraits of Saint-Gaudens. He made at least 14 designs. Finally, he placed the two children in a suggested architectural frame, which gives the life-size double portrait spatial depth, and added a picture of his Scottish Deerhound Dunrobin to the composition : the two children walk hand in hand to the right. Frieda, the elder, holds the collar of the advancing Dunrobin with her left hand, Mortimer Leo, half a head shorter than his sister, lets himself be led by her and holds his headgear in his hanging right hand. The faces of the two children are shown in profile; Frieda wears her long, slightly curled hair down. Above the children's heads there are tendrils and an inscription.
The relief combines naturalistic elements with those of the Classical, Renaissance and French art of Saint-Gautier's time and is considered one of the most memorable works of art of the Gilded Age . Jacob Schiff later commissioned the marble version, which was made in 1906/07 and donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Mortimer Leo Schiff died in 1931 at the age of 54 as a senior partner of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. of a heart attack.Frieda Fanny Schiff lived as Frieda Schiff Warburg until 1958 after her marriage to Felix M. Warburg .
In addition to Saint-Gaudens, she was also portrayed by Anders Zorn . After the death of her parents and her husband, she represented the charitable tradition of her family.
Individual evidence
- ↑ The Children of Jacob H. Schiff at www.metmuseum.org
- ↑ On Dunrobin cf. The Dunrobin Deerhound 1883 at www.irishwolfhoundtimes.com
- ^ Barbara Dayer Gallati and Ortrud Westheider, High Society. American portraits of the Gilded Age (publications of the Bucerius Kunst Forum, ed. By Ortrud Westheider and Michael Philipp), Munich (Hirmer Verlag) 2008, ISBN 978-3-7774-4185-6 , pp. 140 f.
- ↑ Julie Miller, Frieda Schiff Warburg 1876–1958 on jwa.org