Lot 44: John Bradley Storrs, American (1885-1956) Study in

John Bradley Storrs, American (1885-1956) Study in Pure Form Carved stone and black enamel, 42.5cm high Signed and dated 1924 on the base Provenance: From the Estate of Anne Bullitt, having previously belonged to her Father William C. Bullitt, diplomat, journalist and novelist, who was appointed first U.S Ambassador to The Soviet Union in 1933. In his varied career William Bullitt wrote a number of important texts including a psycholgical study of Thomas Woodrown Wilson written in conjuction with Sigmund Freud. Modernist sculptor John Bradley Storrs was born in Chicago in 1885. During his teens he studied at the Chicago Manuel Training School, where he worked with sculptural material for the first time. Storrs went on to study in Paris at the Academie Franklin, the Boston School of the Museum of Fine Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of Arts and finally again in Paris with Auguste Rodin. Having travelled extensively throughout Europe and Egypt, Storrs developed his own styles from numerous diverse sources, most notably Ancient Greek and Egyptian sculpture, Native American geometric art and design, and the modern European movements Cubism, Futurism, Vorticism and Art Deco. Although he worked with a number of materials including bronze and terracotta, it is in his stone sculptures, often with enamel inlay, that all of his influences come together, with clean dynamic lines, solid forms, and stylised patterns the prominent features. Storrs' work will be known to an Irish audience through his relief sculpture of Christ the King which adorns the facade of the church by the same name in Turners Cross, Cork. The unusual Art Deco style church was designed by Chicago architect Barry Byrne, who had purchased a number of works from Storrs in Paris in 1925. Storrs worked on drawings for the figure of Jesus and visited the site in Cork in 1929 before making a number of scale models. The relief itself was executed by Cork sculptor John Maguire, based on Storrs' plaster models which had been shipped from France.