Kurt Frindby & Jakob Erikson: Eve Repentant, after the apple.

Eve repentant

("after the apple")

Visiting a collectors and antiques fair last fall I discovered her and instantly fell in love. Over the years I've had many encounters with objects, prints and paintings "I just could not live without". But too often I had to and did. Older and wiser now, I decided to spend the greater part of my budget-for-this-day on my new muse, not knowing I'ld ever meet her again.  

Kurt Frindby and Jacob Eriksen
?

The label(*) mentions Kurt Frindby (thought to be the retailer) and the artist Jakob Erikson. 

(*) Googling I actually found two different labels: 

It is, according to the label, an original copy, monogrammed J.E. and its of a sculpture in Charlottenburg Art Exhibition (Kopenhagen). But it's not unique. Googling Frindby and Eriksen (who isn't mentioned in any Lexikon but the Internet says (1899-1995) I found some more examples of my oak "Fynbopigen", which I failed to translate. My heart says: "very nice build girl" which I think she is. And I even found some (not many) examples of other sculptures by illusive Jacob Eriksen.  

Please help me to identify these two men and the history of this sculpture. And if you happen to know the whereabouts of her kneeling sister: please contact me. I'ld love to have her.      

  

August Rodin (1840-1917) and Eve. 

Jakob Eriksen, who-ever he was, obviously was inspired by Rodin's famous sculpture of Eve. My "research" shows Rodin could haven been inspired (he probably was, he knew his colleague Brock very well) by Thomas Brock's "Eve Repentant" exhibited in the Paris World Exhibition in 1898. There are today many copies of Rodin's Eve displayed all over the world.  

Auguste Lepere (1849-1918) and Rodin's Eve.

Lepere, with Henri Rivière and the Beltrand brothers the godfathers of Modern Printmaking, showed his engraving skills combined with a touch of artistic interpretation and a simple extra color block in this original 1898 "the Studio" print of his friend's sculpture I was able to find and purchase recently (thank you Irene !) to accompany my Eve.   

Edward Steichen (1879-1973) and Rodin's Eve. 

Edward Steichen, famous early photographer in Rodins studio (1907) shooting this historical photograph. 

Thomas Brock (1847-1922) and Eve.

Brock was greatly praised and admired for his Eve Repentant. I'm quite sure he was inspired by the paintings of George Watts, sculpting his Eve that is now on display in the Tate Gallery but was in the Paris World Exhibition of 1898.   

George Frederic Watts (1817-1904) and Eve.

Well, I think I've found the source and origin of this chain of Eve Repentant sculptures. It was the third and last of a tryptic ("the new Eve" and "Eve tempted" painted by George Frederic Watts. A project started around 1875 and also exhibited in Paris. These paintings now are also in the Tate in London.    

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All pictures borrowed freely from the Internet for friendly, educational and non commercial use only.  

  

Isadora Duncan: a taste for life

Isadora Duncan:

"passionate, electric and with a voracious appetite for art and life".

Mysteriously there’s only one picture of this wonderful sculpture/statue to be found in the Internet. It's in a private collection (in the Romanelli’s ?). And was I lucky to stumble over it ! It is by Italian sculptor Romano Romanelli (1882-1969): “the awakening of Brunhilde” and was created in 1913. From Richard Wagners (1813-1883) Opera Siegfried Act III, Scene 3. The third of four operas from his “Ring des Nibelungen”. Isadora was invited by Cosima Wagner (1837-1930, Richards widow and daughter of Franz Liszt (1811-1886) herself  in the Bayreuth Festspiele to dance on her late husbands music.

But secretly it’s also Isadora Duncan (1877-1927) the legendary dancer who revolutionised and set free modern dance and ballet as well as her own ambiguous lifestyle at the beginning if the 20^th century. Above photographed 7 years later in 1920 by American-German photographer Arnold Genthe (1869-1942).

Dancing barefoot in a classic Grecian outfit called a peplos (ὁ πέπλος) on classical music she inspired the whole of Europe. And many great artist.

Sculptor August Rodin (1840-1919), nicknamed the Sultan of Meudon because of the numerous nude models and muses sprawling over his house and studio every day in later life, had his hands actually all over her, painted/sketched her (above) but it never resulted in a sculpture. Rodin and Romanelli knew each other very well. Most great creative souls have a muse . Rodin's "Eve" below:

Would Picasso, perhaps the greatest and most creative of them all, from memory be hinting at bearded Rodin in his 1934 series of etchings "Sculpteur and Model" ?  

Isadora begged her lover Romano for a child after loosing her two small children by drowning in river Seine in a dramatic car accident that year. She actually bore him a son in 1914 but the little boy died soon after birth. 

The love affair ended, Romanelli married some-one else and so eventually did Duncan. Read this informative condensed biography on Isadora’s tumultuous life: http://www.meaus.com/isadora-duncan.htm.

It was the time of the great French sculptors August Rodin (above), Pierre-August Renoir (1841-1919) and Aristide Maillol (1861-1944). Roman Romanelli, from a long line of sculptors, was taught by his father Rafaello who had been a student of famous sculptor Lorenzo Bartolini (1777-1850). 

The Romanelli family to this day runs an important museum and studio in  Florence (above).

Isadora before had multiple relationships and had children with British Edward Gordon-Craig (1872-1966) a modernist, stage designer and printmaker and friend of William Nicholson (1872-1949) and with heir to the Singer sewing-machine company Paris Singer (1867-1932). 

But she had many affairs, male and female. Her adopted daughters (six of them) called the Isadorables, after the loss of her own two children, raised and taught by their mother, spread her modern dance gospel after she died in a bizarre car accident in 1927. Three of them, Therese, Irma and Anna by Arnold Genthe below.

  

Abraham Walkowitz (1878-1965) created some 5000 (!) modernist drawings of Isodora. Studies of movement, meeting her in Rodin’s studio and likewise attracted by the combination of person, of movement and of form. Duncan in 1916 seeing Walkowitz work would say:” Walkowitz, you have written my biography in lines without words”.

Walkowitz will have been inspired by Rodin's series of drawings of Cambodian dancers using just the outlines in pencil and dashes of color. The Khmer dancers accompanied the visit of King Sisiwath of Cambodia to France in 1906.

Also in Paris from 1907 Walkowitz probably would have witnessed the birth of Henri Matisse’s (1869-1954) “ La Dance” in 1909.

Edward Steichen (1879-1973), the photographer accompanying Isodora to her trip to Greece saw adopted daughter and pupil Therese Duncan  (née Kruger, 1895-1987) in 1921 and snap-shot his remarkable photograph on the Acropolis: “Windfire”, the reincarnation of a Greek nymph. But when you know it, also in a posing almost identical to her mothers statue.

Well that’s more then enough for a rainy day posting, hope you've enjoyed. 

And last:model Eliza Tuturman as Isadora Duncan by contemporary photographer Ian Cartwright.

All pictures borrowed freely from the Internet for friendly, educational and non commercial use only.