Edith Barretto Stevens Parsons More Furniture and Collectibles

Two bronze bookends featuring two children playing by Edith Barretto Parsons, marked with copyright 1913, produced by the Gorham Co foundry. / BIO: Edith Barretto Stevens, grandmother of Serena Pelissier, was born in Halifax, Virginia, in 1878, as her parents were residing there at the time. She died in New Canaan, Connecticut in 1956. When she was six years old the family moved from Virginia to New Jersey. She said that the move inspired her to become an artist: the Virginia property had been so beautiful, and she found the fiercely structured garden in New Jersey so ugly, that she decided to create work that celebrated the beauty of untouched nature. Her figures are pure in their natural state, with no added man-made ornamentation or sentimentality. In her best known figures of small children and animals, we can detect a connection, very subtly rendered, between the animals and the children: the Duck Baby’s hair, for example, flies out at the side, resembling little wings; the Baby Pan has tiny “horns” hidden in the curls on his forehead. There is that hint at connection to be found in each of them. She studied from the age of 15 at the Art Students’ League in New York City, with, among others, Daniel Chester French, George L. Barnard and John Twachtman, and she worked as apprentice to James Earle Fraser. In 1903, at the age of 25, she was appointed to design the pediment of the main entrance to the Liberal Arts Building at the St. Louis fair. In 1908 she married Howard Parsons, one of the many direct descendants of Charles Willson Peale and the slightly fewer descendants of Rembrandt Peale...

A pair of young ducks bookends (running and eating). Very rare model. Lost Wax Foundry method. Each signed "E·B· PARSONS " and stamped "Kunst Foundry NY," in the bases. Bronze with brown original patina. Condition: Wear and minor losses to the patina. Edith Barretto Stevens Parsons (1878 Houston, Virginia -1956 New Canaan, Connecticut) was an American sculptor. She studied with Daniel Chester French, and at the Art Students League of New York, where she won a sculpture prize and scholarships. She apprenticed with James Earle Fraser. She sculpted figures for the 1902 St. Louis Exposition's Liberal Arts Building, and in 1908 showed her sculpture Earth Mother at the National Academy of Design. That same year, she married Howard Crosby Parsons, and built a studio on the top floor of their home. Her work changed its subject matter as her own children were born and posed for her sculptures, often holding ducks, turtles, and other creatures. Duck Baby, beginning a series of garden sculptures for which she is best known today, was the popular hit of the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition. The exposition handbook stated: "In the presence of so much that is weighty and powerful, the popularity of Duck Baby is a significant and touching indication of the world's hunger for what is cheerful and mirth-provoking." The same may be said of Turtle Baby and Frog Baby...