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Instructions:
Move the mouse around the left image to see different parts of the image.
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| Gift from W.W. Clyde, Fred & Sherry Ross, John & Birdella Bearn |
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Dallin's second trip to Paris began in 1896 and lasted three years. Now thirty-five years old and unsatisfied with his efforts, Dallin returned to student life, entering the atelier of Jean-Auguste Dampt (1853-1946), a master sculptor of the Beaux-Arts and academic style. He came to Paris with his family and concentrated on bringing his work to up to the technical competence of the French masters of that day. As Charles H. Caffin in his book "American Masters of Sculpture" noted in 1913, it was here that Dallin acquired the "technical perfection and elegance of style" for which the French schools were so renowned.
Rell G. Francis, the artist's biographer, writes, "it was with this training that Dallin's career as a true sculptor was to emerge, for it helped him to make some of his finest works." (p.98) One of his most superb sculptures was his equestrian bronze of Don Quixote in 1898. In it Dallin attempted to match the qualities that connoted academic excellence which he found in French sculpture of the day.
Cyrus Dallin has chosen this popular nineteenth-century Spanish subject, taken from Miguel de Cervantes' (1547-1616) classic seventeenth-century novel, and has instilled it with distinctive vigor. "Don Quixote de La Mancha, The Knight of the Windmill", is seen mounted on his bony steed, Rosinante, and clothed in full armor. Dallin even went so far as to translate Paul Verlaine's quaint sonnet into English.
The piece immediately appealed to the critics when it was exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1898. William H. Downs, art critic for the "Brush and Pencil" commented, "The Don Quixote is the artist's best work up to the present time. It is conceived in an absolutely ideal spirit, and is enveloped in an atmosphere of romance which is completely in harmony with that of Cervantes." He later noteed that it was "one of the most delightfully original and imaginative of American sculptures."
Dallin's own appraisal of the clay sculpture must have been very high as well. With great sacrifice he had the piece cast by one of Paris's finest bronze foundries, E Grout Jeune. This foundry also cast the work of the great French sculptor, Auguste Rodin. At that time, the cost of casting bronze was prohibitive and the young artist had to sacrifice in order to see the work ready for the Salon exhibition. He was determined that it should be shown to great advantage, so that it might compete on equal footing with the contemporary masters of his day.
After its exhibition at the Paris Salon of 1898, the statue was sold to Thomas W. Lawson, a wealthy copper mogul from Egypt, Massachusetts. When he fell on hard times it was sold at the American Art Galleries in New York City in 1923. It was lost after this sale and historian Rell Francis searched for the statue for thirty years, fearing it had been destroyed. |
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