Lot 40: HERMON ATKINS MACNEIL (1866-1947) THE RETURNING OF THE SNAKES - THE MOQUI PRAYER FOR RAIN

inscribed H.A. MACNEIL Sc, titled THE RETURNING OF THE SNAKES THE MOQUI PRAYER FOR RAINand with founder's mark Fond. Nelli. ROMA bronze, brown patina Height: 22 1/2 in.57.2 cm. MacNeil won the Rinehart scholarship in 1895 allowing him to spend four years in Rome. According to Lorado Taft the first piece he created was, "The Moqui Runner, a naked Indian speeding through cactus growth, his face aflame with fanatic zeal, his hair streaming in the wind, and in his hands a loathsome tangle of serpents. It is savagery personified. The little figure looks as though it would rush by and out of sight, so animated in the pose: but it is modelled very closely, with a seriousness of treatment and of expression befitting its religious significance...The Moquis are, however, a slender delicate race of gentle mien and regular features -almost Japanese in suggestion- while this creature has the build of a young Hercules and the face of an amiable demon (Taft, p. 439-440) Provenance: Estate of Porter, Lake Geneva, Wisconsin Acquired by the present owner from the above in the late 1940s Literature: c.f. Lorado Taft, The History of American Sculpture, New York, 1903, pp. 439, 440.