Lot 16: FRANKLIN SIMMONS 1839 - 1913

FRANKLIN SIMMONS 1839 - 1913 VALLEY FORGE inscribed Franklin Simmons sculptor 1878 and titled Valley Forge on the base and numbered 5 beneath the base bronze, brownish-green patina cast no. 5 height: 31 in. (78.7 cm)

New York, Hirschl & Adler Galleries, From the Studio: Selections of American Sculpture 1811-1941, April-June 1986, no. 10, p. 20, illustrated
Washington D.C., Adams Davidson Galleries, Marble and Bronze: 100 Years of American Sculpture 1840-1940, 1984, no.7, illustrated p. 12, listed incorrectly as 14 1/2 in. high

cf. Frances Davis Whittemore, George Washington in Sculpture, Boston, Massachusetts, 1933, p. 126-129, pls. XXXII, XXXIII
Glenn B. Opitz, Dictionary of American Sculptors, Poughkeepsie, New York, 1984, p. 624, illustrated
cf. Pamela W. Hawkes, "Franklin Simmons, Yankee Sculptor in Rome," The Magazine Antiques, July 1985, p. 127, fig. 7, illustrated

Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above, 1986

"Franklin Simmons worked both in marble and bronze; his career spanned the years between the first generation of neoclassical marble sculptors and the bronze sculptors of the American Renaissance. Born in Maine, Simmons began his career by sculpting cameos, bronze portrait reliefs, and busts in Lewiston and later Portland, but by 1868 had moved to Italy where he settled in Rome. There he began to create classically-inspired marble figures such as Penelope, Medusa, and Galatea. Comparing his use of the two media, Pamela Hawkes wrote [Franklin Simmons, Yankee Sculptor in Rome, "The Magazine Antiques," pp. 127-128]: "...Simmons's bronzes, which were cast directly from the plaster he had made, often have greater life and interest than the highly finished marbles."

This work, executed one-hundred years after General George Washington's long winter encampment at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, depicts Washington not as the traditional heroic figure but rather as a sympathetic, even vulnerable man. It is a moving psychological portrait which contracts with ideally-conceived marbles of the period.

Another bronze of Valley Forge, dated 1879, is in the collection of the Valley Forge Historical Society, Pennsylvania; later reduced variants (approx. 23 in. high) are in the Portland Museum of Art, Maine, and the Washington Memorial Chapel, Valley Forge, Pennsylvania." (Hirschl & Adler, From the Studio: Selections of American Sculpture 1811-1941, 1986, p. 20)