Lot 49W
Karl Theodore Francis Bitter(1867-1915)Boy Stealing Geese 57in high
18 May 2016, 14:00 EDT
New YorkUS$50,000 - US$70,000
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Karl Theodore Francis Bitter (1867-1915)
Boy Stealing Geese
inscribed 'Karl Bitter' and '1895.' (on the base) and 'Cast By A.T. Lorme. / N.Y. 1896.' (on the reverse)
bronze with brown patina
57in high
inscribed 'Karl Bitter' and '1895.' (on the base) and 'Cast By A.T. Lorme. / N.Y. 1896.' (on the reverse)
bronze with brown patina
57in high
Footnotes
Provenance
The artist.
Mrs. Marie A. (Shevill) Bitter, New York, the artist's wife, by descent.
Mrs. Marietta (Bitter) Abel, New York, the artist's daughter, by descent.
By descent to the present owner from the above.
Born in Vienna in 1867, Karl Bitter trained at the Kunstgewerbeschule and subsequently the prestigious Kunstakademie while at the same time working as a sculptural apprentice. He fled his native Austria in protest of his peacetime conscription into the military and landed in America in 1888. In the United States, Bitter quickly found work doing architectural decoration and was soon employed by the influential architect Richard Morris Hunt. Within two years, Bitter was successfully competing for the commission of the bronze doors at Trinity Church in Manhattan and soon thereafter, contributing works to the Administration Building for the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.
Numerous large-scale public commissions followed in New York and throughout the Midwest. Noted for his organizational skills, Bitter was named President of the National Sculpture Society from 1906-08 and in 1901 directed the sculptural campaigns for the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, The Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, Missouri in 1904 and ultimately the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco, California in 1915. He is perhaps best known in Manhattan for his memorial to Carl Schurz and his design for the Pulitzer Fountain in Grand Army Plaza, which was completed posthumously following his untimely death in 1915, having been struck by a reckless driver after leaving a performance at the Metropolitan Opera.
In addition to the figure of Abundance (Pomona), which surmounts the Pulitzer Fountain, Bitter executed a number of other fountains including Girl with Geese for John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s Pocantico Hills estate, Kykuit. Only two casts of Boy Stealing Geese were made. The original cast was commissioned by George W. Vanderbilt for his home at Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina. The present lot, the second and final casting of Boy Stealing Geese was cast in 1896 and was displayed at Bitter's home.
Sculptural groups of children with geese date back to ancient times. Through his studies and most likely access to plaster casts, Bitter would have been aware of the Hellenistic group of sculpture, Boy Struggling with a Goose. Bitter's 1895 composition, however, is much more ambitious and animated, with the boy hoisting the entire bird in his arms while another spreads its wings and attempts to take flight from below his stance. One can almost hear the cacophony of goose honks and cries amidst the clamor.
The artist revisited the subject nearly twenty years later with his Girl with Geese bronze sculptural group for the Rockefellers. In this work, the struggle has lessened and the smiling girl cradles a more compliant waterfowl in her arms while its companions cavort at her feet.
According to family lore, the employment of geese in Bitter's sculpture may have had a more personal meaning. The artist is said to have owned a trained pet goose, Fifi, that he used as a model, which purportedly walked on a leash in Central Park, and accompanied the family on vacations.
