Saturday, February 04, 2012
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Frederick William MacMonnies (American, 1863-1937)
Bacchante with Infant Faun, 1893
BronzeTampa Museum of Art. Gift of Joseph Veach Noble in honor of Lois C. Noble 1997.10
Bacchante with Infant Faun, 1893
BronzeTampa Museum of Art. Gift of Joseph Veach Noble in honor of Lois C. Noble 1997.10
Frederick MacMonnies developed his skills while an apprentice to famed sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens and by his subsequent study at the National Academy of Design. As a result of MacMonnies’ friendship with prominent architect Charles F. McKim, a life-size version of Bacchante with Infant Faun was donated to the courtyard of McKim’s recently completed building, the Boston Public Library. When installed in 1896 its naturalistic figure, sensual exuberance, and its perceived reference to inebriation resulted in it being deemed inappropriate and offensive, causing it to be withdrawn and subsequently given to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. MacMonnies often cast his bronzes in various sizes to make the works available to a larger audience. In addition to the full-scale version, three smaller sizes of the subject were also cast. The sculpture provides a valuable link between the work of Hiram Powers and C. Paul Jennewein, both represented in TMA’s collection.
Greek & Roman Antiquities
The Tampa Museum of Art houses one of the finest selections of Greek and Roman antiquities in the southeastern United States. The Joseph Veach Noble Collection, purchased in 1986 from an important scholar and collector, forms the core of this collection. Known for its outstanding selection of painted Greek and south Italian pottery, Tampa’s holdings survey the material culture of the Mediterranean region from the Bronze Age to the Roman Imperial period.
With over 500 objects, the collection illustrates the types of artwork characteristic of ancient Greece, Italy and beyond: painted pottery; sculpture in marble, bronze, and terra cotta; personal ornaments of bronze and gold; struck bronze and silver coins; and a variety of ancient glass vessels as well as other items that illuminate interesting aspects of daily life. These works of art offer valuable insights into the societies that produced them. They vividly depict a complex interplay of beliefs and lifestyles, spanning thousands of years and forming the foundations of Western civilization.
Photography
The museum has over 2,149 photographs representing a wide variety of photographic techniques and formats: daguerreotype, albumen, salt, photogravure, stereographic, collotype, gelatin silver, carbon and chromogenic. Particular areas of strength include nineteenth-century photographs, especially expeditionary images related to Greece and Rome, and photography created after 1970.
The collection initially was established with an emphasis on photographs created by artists who stage, manipulate and otherwise transform their subject matter. Since then it has expanded to include examples by other important contemporary photographers. Examples include: Berenice Abbott, John Baldessari, Zeke Berman, Nancy Burson, Chuck Close, Eileen Cowin, Robert Doisneau, Robert Frank, Sally Gall, Phillippe Halsman, Bud Lee, Robert Mapplethorpe, Duane Michals, Abelardo Morell, Eliot Porter, Robert Rauschenberg, Sebastiao Salgado, Lucas Samaras, Andres Serrano, Cindy Sherman, Aaron Siskind, Sandy Skoglund, Jerry Uelsmann, Burk Uzzle, William Wegman, and Garry Winogrand.
Part of the photography collection consists of works whose subject matter is exclusively related to archaeological excavations and classical imagery. These photographs were gifts from a single donor, William Knight Zewadski. This area of the collection serves as an impressive resource for the museum’s collection of antiquities and provides examples of many of the early techniques and practitioners of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Examples include such artists as Felix Bohfils, Constantin Dimitris, Roger Fenton, Francis Frith, and Robert MacPerson. An endowment for photography provided by the Frank E. Duckwall endowment within the Community Foundation of Tampa Bay provides some of the means to build the collection.