Pan by Frederick MacMonnies (1863-1937), bronze casting, 9″ x 4″ x 4 1/4″, unsigned.
Medium: Bronze casting
From humble beginnings in Brooklyn, Frederick William MacMonnies emerged as one of the most prominent American Naturalistic artists at the turn of the twentieth century. Best known as a superb sculptor of the Beaux-Arts school (see Bacchante and Infant Fawn and Pan), MacMonnies was also accomplished in the two-dimensional medium, demonstrating a dexterous command of oil on canvas. As successful in France as in the United States, he exhibited regularly at the Paris Salon, where in 1901 he received an honorable mention for the first painting he submitted, Le Raseur.
Renowned for large-scale public monuments and decorative sculpture during the height of the Gilded Age, MacMonnies later grew disillusioned with sculptural commissions and increasingly turned toward painting. Although brief, this shift produced a series of intimate portraits, particularly of family members, that contrast sharply with the grandeur of his public works and reveal a more personal, introspective side of his artistic practice.
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