Images(2)

Antelope and Hound

Maker Wilhelm Hunt Diederich (American, 1884 - 1953)

Collections

ClassificationsSCULPTURE

Date1916

Mediumbronze on marble base

Dimensions22 x 26 x 10 in. (55.9 x 66 x 25.4 cm.)

DescriptionThe grandson of the Boston painter William Morris Hunt and grandnephew of the architect Richard Morris Hunt, William Hunt Diederich was born in Hungary on a vast estate managed by his father, who died in 1887. Diederich spent his boyhood in Switzerland, moving at age sixteen with his mother and brother to the United States, where they lived in his grandfather's house in Boston, Massachusetts. There he attended the Milton Academy and enrolled in art classes at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. From 1905 through 1908 he continued his art education at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, taking several trips to the western United States and abroad. In 1908, he returned to Europe, primarily living in Rome and in Paris, where he exhibited his work in the Paris Salons of 1910 and 1911 and showed a bronze sculpture Greyhounds to great acclaim at the Salon d'Automne of 1913. With the outbreak of war, he moved back to the United States and established a studio in New York City, where he exhibited his work alongside friends and fellow pioneers of modern American sculpture such as Paul Manship, Elie Nadelman and Jo Davidson. Widely recognized for his skilled handling of various media, including ironwork, ceramics, paper silhouettes, and even textile design, Diederich's most significant works were his cast-bronze sculptures of animals, of which Antelope and Hound is a fine and rare example. Only one other cast is known to exist. Inspired by his father's hunting and, later, his own experiences in the western United States, the artist felt that animals expressed great rhythm and movement, and he used them as the subject for much of his work. With the sinuous curves of the hound's back and tail contrasting the strong line of the antelope's neck and the horizontal sweep of its body and outstretched leg, Antelope and Hound demonstrates these dynamic qualities. His simplification of forms, here manifested in the dramatic silhouette, the elongated features of both animals, and strategic use of simple, patterned chasing around the antelope's head and hindquarters, all reflect the folk art of his native Hungary. The art critic and artist Guy Pène du Bois called Diederich "a decorative revolutionist, with one foot in the past and the other pointing a toe at the future," alluding to Diederich's references to the aesthetics of craft and earlier sculptural traditions, and their transformation into streamlined, modernist forms. Joining works by Paul Manship, Elie Nadelman, Jo Davidson, John Gregory and Maurice Sterne, Diederich's Antelope and Hound would be a significant addition to The Huntington's growing collection of sculpture, serving as a particularly impressive example of the pivotal moment of transition from the Beaux-arts style of the late nineteenth century to the modernism of the early twentieth century.

Credit LineThe Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Purchased with funds from the Art Collectors' Council, Connie Perkins Endowment, Anne and Jim Rothenberg, and the Virginia Steele Scott Foundation

Label TextIn Antelope and Hound, Diederich combined stylistic influences from folk art and Modernism to create a sculpture expressing lively movement. The attenuated forms of both animals and the stylized pattern decorating the antelope's head, spine, and haunches relates to folk art that Diederich saw as a child growing up in Hungary and Switzerland and as a young adult in the United States.

Status

Not on view

Object number2005.5