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Alexander Stirling Calder (1870-1945) Scratching Her Heel 12 1/4in (31.1cm) high (Modeled in 1921.) image 1

Alexander Stirling Calder (1870-1945) Scratching Her Heel 12 1/4in (31.1cm) high (Modeled in 1921.) image 2

Alexander Stirling Calder (1870-1945) Scratching Her Heel 12 1/4in (31.1cm) high (Modeled in 1921.) image 3

Alexander Stirling Calder (1870-1945) Scratching Her Heel 12 1/4in (31.1cm) high (Modeled in 1921.) image 4

Alexander Stirling Calder (1870-1945) Scratching Her Heel 12 1/4in (31.1cm) high (Modeled in 1921.) image 5

Alexander Stirling Calder (1870-1945) Scratching Her Heel 12 1/4in (31.1cm) high (Modeled in 1921.) image 6

Lot 54

Alexander Stirling Calder
(1870-1945)
Scratching Her Heel 12 1/4in (31.1cm) high

American Art

29 July 2020, 16:00 EDT

New York

Sold for US$17,575 inc. premium

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Alexander Stirling Calder (1870-1945)

Scratching Her Heel
inscribed 'Calder' (on the base) and 'KUNST F'NDY-NY' (along the base)
bronze with dark brown patina
12 1/4in (31.1cm) high
Modeled in 1921.

Footnotes

Provenance
Private collection, Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania, circa 1960s.
Acquired by the present owner from the above, circa 2010s.

Literature
J. Bowes, "The Sculpture of Stirling Calder," The American Magazine of Art, May 1925, vol. XVI, no. 5, p. 236, another example illustrated.
R. Wellman, "Exhibitions in the New York Galleries," Parnassus, February 1934, vol. VI, no. II, p. 11, another example listed.
A.T. Gardner, American Sculpture: A Catalogue of the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Greenwich, Connecticut, 1965, pp. 106-107, no 22.154, another example illustrated.
M.C. Hayes, M. Cowley, Three Alexander Calders, Middlebury, Vermont, 1977, pp. 144, 174, other examples listed.
L. Dimmick, D.J. Hassler, T. Tolles, American Sculpture in the Metropolitain Museum of Art: Volume II. A Catalogue of Works by Artists Born between 1865 and 1885, New York, 2001, pp. 530-531, no. 236, another example illustrated.
H.K. McCullough, Telfair Museum of Art: Collection Highlights, Savannah, Georgia, 2005, pp. 51, 309, another example listed.

Alexander Stirling Calder excelled as a figurative sculptor and had an interest in recording the ordinary motions of everyday life. Trained in the academic tradition, his nude figure studies were heavily influenced by his time in the atelier of Jean-Alexandre-Joseph Falguière (1831-1900) when he studied in Paris from 1890 to 1892. In Scratching Her Heel, Calder presents his subject in a natural, but complicated pose as she bends and twists her body to reach her left heel with her left hand. He sculpts the figure in both realistic detail and form, however, he renders her hair in a more stylized fashion that reflects the more decorative aspect of his works. Another example of Scratching Her Heel cast by Roman Bronze Works in New York is recorded in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and in the collection of the Telfair Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia.

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