BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (NPG) -- Exhibit: Jo Davidson: Biographer in Bronze

DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (NPG) -- Exhibit: Jo Davidson: Biographer in Bronze:

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. SIPGJO_160504_003.JPG: Jo Davidson, 1883-1952 The son of Russian Jewish immigrants, Joseph Davidson was outgoing and gregarious. Portraiture became "an obsession" for this talented sculptor, who often sought out sitters whose achievements interested him. In the 1930s he began to use his talents to support liberal political causes. He helped to form the Independent Voters Committee of the Arts and Sciences for Roosevelt, in 1944, noting that President Roosevelt "laughingly said to me, 'Jo, have they called you a Communist yet?'" After the Second World War, the committee joined with others to form the Progressive Party. Self-portrait, 1981 cast after a 1946 original
2. SIPGJO_160504_032.JPG: Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, 1875-1942 Sculptor Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney commissioned this portrait and a statuette of herself in New York in 1916. Davidson wrote: "This was her way of helping me carry on. . . . Her enthusiasm did much to help sustain my courage in this period." She funded Davidson's return to Paris after World War I to make portraits of the Allied leaders and continued to support his career, commenting about his posthumous portrait of her husband Harry Payne Whitney, "Everything he touches is like magic." An important early collector of modernist American art, she founded the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1931. Jo Davidson, 1968 cast after a 1916 original
3. SIPGJO_160504_044.JPG: Sinclair Lewis, 1885-1951 Novelist Sinclair Lewis was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1930, the first American to be so honored. His satirical novels critical of aspects of the American character and American institutions included Main Street, Babbitt, Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry, and Dodsworth, all published between 1920 and 1929. Davidson had met Lewis in 1907 at the Socialist colony that Upton Sinclair founded in New Jersey. The portrait was done at Davidson's request: "I had been wanting to do him for a long time. But old friends shy away with, 'What do you want to do me for?' As usual they end up by posing." Jo Davidson, 1967 cast from a 1937 plaster
4. SIPGJO_160504_054.JPG: Robinson Jeffers, 1887-1962 In 1914 expressionist poet Robinson Jeffers settled in Carmel, California. Davidson sculpted him there in 1930 at the home of their mutual friend Lincoln Steffens. Davidson saw Jeffers as "what I always imagined a poet should look like-tall, handsome, shy and silent, moving about under a sort of spell." Jeffers signed the finished clay portrait and later pronounced the bronze version "extraordinarily like . . ., more so in the bronze than it was in the clay. So now we have a solider [more solid] immortality than verses can make." Jo Davidson, 1930
5. SIPGJO_160504_064.JPG: Gertrude Stein, 1874-1946 Gertrude Stein's experimental writing style impressed Davidson. "While I was doing her portrait, she would come around to my studio with a manuscript and read it aloud. The extraordinary part of it was that, as she read, I never felt any sense of mystification. 'A rose is a rose is a rose,' took on a different meaning with each inflection. When she read aloud, I got the humor of it. We both laughed, and her laughter was something to hear. There was an eternal quality about her-she somehow symbolized wisdom." Jo Davidson, 1922-23
6. SIPGJO_160504_085.JPG: George W. Norris, 1861-1944 Davidson made this portrait of eighty-one-year-old Nebraska senator George W. Norris at the time of his electoral defeat after forty years in Congress. He and Norris talked about Norris's role in creating the federal government's regional rural electrification project -- the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) -- the reform measure passed during Roosevelt's first one hundred days in office. Norris spoke of "the wonder of it [the reform measure] and its possibilities." Davidson told him about his visit to Norris Dam and his attempt to adapt his figure, The Stemming of the Tides, to the dam that bore Norris's name. Davidson later wrote, "There was a dignity about this old man." Jo Davidson, 1942
7. SIPGJO_160504_099.JPG: Albert Einstein, 1879-1955 As early as 1930, Davidson planned to portray German theoretical physicist Albert Einstein, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921. After Einstein immigrated to America in 1933, Davidson made the portrait at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University. During sittings, Einstein discussed a complex mathematical problem with his assistant, Walther Mayer. Einstein and Davidson doubtless also discussed European politics. The following year, Davidson sent him a check to assist European Jews. On Davidson's death in 1952, Einstein wrote, "His passing will be keenly felt as an impoverishment of public life in this time of distrust towards all non-conformists." Jo Davidson, c 1934
8. SIPGJO_160504_111.JPG: Lincoln Steffens, 1866-1936 Davidson met reformist journalist Lincoln Steffens, author of The Shame of the Cities (1904), at the beginning of World War I in New York. They became lifelong friends, traveling to France on the same ship in 1918. While Davidson made portraits in Paris, Steffens went to Moscow as a member of a secret mission sent to observe and report on the new Bolshevik government. Steffens told Davidson, "I have seen the future, and it works!" Steffens later wrote about Davidson's portrait sessions with world leaders, saying that the artist brought back "more than a likeness. He had conversations to repeat, and such conversations!" Jo Davidson, 1920
9. SIPGJO_160504_117.JPG: Edward M. House, 1858-1938 Davidson traveled to France at the end of World War I to sculpt portraits of the victorious Allied leaders for a "plastic history" that he planned. Edward M. House was President Woodrow Wilson's close personal adviser and sat for his portrait at the time of the Versailles peace conference. Imitating another of Davidson's sitters, House signed the clay version of the portrait. Regarding his career at this time, Davidson later wrote, "The speed with which one sitter replaced another, each being a distinct personality, taught me to simplify more and extract the essentials needed to make a portrait." Jo Davidson, 1919
10. SIPGJO_160504_123.JPG: Andrew Furuseth, 1854-1938 President of the International Seamen's Union of America from 1908, Andrew Furuseth, a lifelong defender of seamen's rights, worked with Senator Robert M. La Follette to pass the Seamen's Act of 1915. Furuseth met Davidson in Paris in 1919 at the time of the Versailles peace conference, and ten years later he agreed to sit at Davidson's request. Davidson later wrote, "He had the kind of head that told you, the moment you clapped eyes on him, what he was and what he did. Furuseth looked like the figurehead on a Norwegian ship, and he proved to be as fascinating as he looked." Jo Davidson, 1929
11. SIPGJO_160504_131.JPG: Jo Davidson: Biographer in Bronze: "I often wondered what it was that drove me to make busts of people. It wasn't so much that they had faces that suggested sculpture... What interested me was the people themselves -- to be with them, to hear them speak and watch their faces change. It is true that, in making portraits, some intrigued me more than others. I would get some quickly and others would evade me. Some sitters give themselves with ease -- others resist. I once said facetiously that some of my sitters were short stories, and others were novels. It takes two to make a bust." -- Jo Davidson, "Between Sittings" (1951) Throughout a five decade career, Davidson modeled portraits in clay that were cast in bronze or terra-cotta or carved in stone. This selection was made from sixty examples owned by the National Portrait Gallery; others can be seen in the gallery's twentieth-century exhibitions on the third floor.
12. SIPGJO_160504_133.JPG: Clare Boothe Luce, 1903-1987 Davidson made portraits of journalist and playwright Clare Boothe Luce and her husband Henry R. Luce (founder of Time magazine) at their South Carolina estate. Her portrait was polychromed, a technique which interested Davidson, who later wrote: "I had installed a kiln in my studio in Paris, so that I could fire my own terra-cottas. I finally found an amalgam (a mixture of clays) which, when fired, produced the basic color I was after, a warm vibrant flesh tint." He added the watercolor tones before firing "to accentuate the life quality of the portrait bust." Jo Davidson, 1939
13. SIPGJO_160504_142.JPG: Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1882-1945 Davidson sculpted Franklin D. Roosevelt at the White House. Davidson noted, "He was rolled in, seated in a wheelchair and he greeted us with a broad, cheerful smile." He wrote later that Roosevelt "won me completely with his charm, his beautiful voice and his freedom from constraint. He had unshakeable faith in man. . . . Nobody before had worried about the artist, but in Roosevelt's tremendous relief program, the artist too was included, and the influence of the WPA projects was tremendous." Davidson, a strong supporter of Roosevelt, offered casts similar to this one as a fundraiser for the Young Democrats during the 1936 election. Jo Davidson, white metal, 1934
14. SIPGJO_160504_149.JPG: Andrew Mellon, 1855-1937 Davidson later noted that when portraying financier Andrew Mellon, Mellon and the artist discussed the terms of the arrangement, "in a businesslike manner, befitting a Secretary of the Treasury." To Davidson, Mellon's "fine face, delicate complexion, white hair and mustache, suggested stone or terra-cotta." But Mellon responded, "I prefer bronze," and then suggested, "You will do it in bronze, and if I don't like the bronze, you will do it in terra-cotta or stone?" Davidson agreed. When the clay model for the bronze was completed, Mellon expressed his satisfaction, and on receiving the bronze, was "very pleased with the finished work." Jo Davidson, 1927-35
15. SIPGJO_160504_161.JPG: John Marin, 1870-1953 American landscape painter John Marin lived in Paris from 1905 to 1911. One evening, at the Caf� du Dome, a spot popular with many young American artists, Davidson persuaded Marin to sit for this portrait. He later wrote, "I induced him, after an absinthe or two, to sit for me. On the way to the studio we bought a loaf of bread, some cheese, and a bottle of wine. . . . I don't know how long we worked or when we left the studio, . . . but when I woke up the next morning, there was the bust of John Marin in clay." Jo Davidson, 1908
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Description of Subject Matter: Jo Davidson: Biographer in Bronze
July 1, 2006 – Permanent
On view are 14 bronze and terra-cotta portraits made by renowned American sculptor Jo Davidson between 1908 and 1946, including depictions of Gertrude Stein, Franklin D. Roosevelt, artist John Marin, and Lincoln Steffens.
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