Footnotes

Provenance
Private collection, circa 1960s-70s.
By descent to the present owner from the above, 2006.

Literature
Gorham Company, Bronze Division, Bronze Division Papers: 4. Casting records of statuary and small bronzes owned by sculptors, Identification Assigned to Statuary and Bronzes, 1906-1930, New York, 1923, p. 225, no. QBWS, another example listed. (as (nude female) Vine)
Gorham Company, Bronze Division, Bronze Division Papers: 7. Photograph files of statuary and small bronzes, New York, n.d., n.p., no. QBWS, another example illustrated.
"48 Works Are Sold In Winter Academy," The Art News: An International Pictorial of Art, December 15, 1923, vol. XXII, no. 10, p. 2, another example listed.
"Contemporary Art and The National Academy," The American Magazine of Art, January 1924, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 719, 722, another example illustrated.
"Providence," The Art News: An International Pictorial of Art, March 29, 1924, vol. XXII, no. 25, p. 12, another example listed.
"Notes from Los Angeles," The American Magazine of Art, July 1924, vol. 15, no. 7, p. 382, another example listed.
M.C. Smith, "The Art of Harriet Frishmuth," The American Magazine of Art, September 1925, vol. 16, no. 9, pp. 474, 478, another example illustrated.
The Gorham Company, Bronze Division, Famous Small Bronzes, New York, 1928, p. 101, another example illustrated.
A.T.E. Gardner, "Sculpture Survey, 1872-1951," The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, December 1951, vol. X, no. 4, p. 143, another example listed.
F. Pfister, "Statuary to Electronics via Plaster Molding," The Foundry, September 1952, another example illustrated.
B.G. Proske, Brookgreen Gardens Sculpture, Brookgreen Gardens, South Carolina, 1968, p. 226, another example listed.
A. Schmavonian, ed., "Harriet Whitney Frishmuth, American Sculptor," The Courier, October 1971, vol. IX, no. 1, pp. 26-27, another example listed.
C.N. Aronson, Sculptured Hyacinths, New York, 1973, pp. 43-46, 87, 127, 200, 202, 208, other examples illustrated.
"Acquisitions: 1984," Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin, 1986, p. 80, another example listed.
J. Conner, J. Rosenkranz, Rediscoveries in American Sculpture: Studio Works, 1893-1939, Austin, 1989, pp. 38-39, another example illustrated.
C.S. Rubinstein, American Women Sculptors: A History of Women Working in Three Dimensions, Boston, Massachusetts, 1990, p. 154-156, another example illustrated.
P.B. Freedman, R.J. Frank, A Checklist of American Sculpture at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, 1992, pp. 66-67, no. 98, another example illustrated.
Eaton Fine Art, Inc., From Neo-Classical and Beaux-Arts to Modernism: A Passage in American Sculpture, exhibition catalogue, West Palm Beach, Florida, 2000, pp. 44-45, another example illustrated.
D.J. Hassler, J.M. Marter, J.L. Thompson, T. Tolles, American Sculpture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Volume II. A Catalogue of Works by Artists Born between 1865 and 1886, New York, 2001, pp. 640, 642-643, no. 294, another example illustrated.
J. Conner, L.R. Lehmbeck, T. Tolles, F.L. Hohmann III, Captured Motion, The Sculpture of Harriet Whitney Frishmuth: A Catalogue of Works, New York, 2006, pp. 31, 33, 46, 58-59, 79, 102, 107n10, 150-51, 176, 240, 277, no. 1921:1, other examples illustrated.

The Vine demonstrates Harriet Frishmuth's mastery of skill and her powers of ingenuity like no other work in her oeuvre. Her inspiration for the present work came from her love of ballet performances and was first conceived as a study for one of her sculpture classes that she taught at her Sniffen Court studio in New York. Her model, Renee Wilde struck a number of spontaneous poses until Frishmuth and the other ladies saw a pose they especially liked. As their work continued that day, Frishmuth posed Wilde on her tiptoes, bent her back, and had her reach up to the sky with hands overlapping and holding a rope to simulate a grape vine, thus where the sculpture would eventually get its name. For the finished work, Frishmuth depicts Wilde as a woodland nymph and has placed bunches of grapes at her feet. Her eyes are closed in ecstasy and her body forms a sinuous vertical s-curve. Frishmuth's fluid modeling of the surfaces allows for the body to be shown in an elegant unbroken arc. In 1923, she enlarged the sculpture to overlifesize for the National Sculpture Society's exhibition at the Hispanic Society of America. Later that year at the winter annual exhibition at the National Academy of Design, she received the Julia A. Shaw Memorial Prize for the best work in the exhibition done by a woman. Today, The Vine is still considered one of Frishmuth's most popular and commercially successful works.