Jo Davidson
Videos
Page
Jo Davidson was an American sculptor. Although he specialized in realistic, intense portrait busts, Davidson did not require his subjects to formally pose for him; rather, he observed and spoke with them. He worked primarily with clay, while the final products were typically cast in terra-cotta or bronze, or carved from marble.
Jo Davidson
Young American Artists of the Modern School, L. to R. Jo Davidson, Edward Steichen, Arthur B. Carles, John Marin; back: Marsden Hartley, Laurence Fellows, c. 1911, Bates College Museum of Art
Jo Davidson's life-size sculpture of Gertrude Stein was created in Paris in 1923, and a bronze cast of it was made in 1991 for Bryant Park, Manhattan, New York City. Sculptor Jo Davidson (a Stein friend from her Paris years) wrote, "She somehow symbolized wisdom" and he depicted her as "a sort of modern Buddha."
A bust of George W. Norris created by Jo Davidson in 1942 for the Nebraska Hall of Fame.
Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney
Videos
Page
Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney was an American sculptor, art patron and collector, and founder in 1931 of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. She was a prominent social figure and hostess, who was born into the wealthy Vanderbilt family and married into the Whitney family.
circa 1909
Gertrude, 13 years of age. (John Everett Millais, 1888)
Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney in her studio, ca. 1920
Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt, II and her daughters, Gladys and Gertrude, having tea in the library at the Breakers Newport, Rhode Island, William Bruce Ellis Ranken, 1932