Bernard Goldberg Fine Arts

Provenance:

Suzanne Vanderwoude Collection, New York

Exhibited:

At Home in Manhattan: Modern Decorative Arts, 1925 to the Depression, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, November 10, 1983- February 5, 1984; illus. fig. 20, p. 37.

Hunt Diederich, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, June 28-September 29, 1991, n.p.

William Hunt Diederich’s fascination with animals, which remained strong throughout his career, developed from his childhood encounters with the horses, stags, and exotic hounds that inhabited his family’s estate in Hungary.  In their physical shape and unique characteristics, the artist found a form analogous to his governing aesthetic philosophy, declaring, “Animals seem to me truly plastic. They possess such supple, unspoiled rhythm.”[1]  The graceful lines, fluid movements and inherent nobility of these animals inspired the artist’s distinctive style and resulted in a range of exquisite wrought iron, bronze and paper works.

At the age of sixteen, after studying for a time in Switzerland, Diederich moved to Boston to live with his maternal grandfather, the painter William Morris Hunt.  Enrolled at the venerable Milton Academy, Diederich’s restless, independent nature clashed with the school’s traditional academic environment, and before long he dropped out and headed west, assuming the life of a cowboy on ranches in Arizona, New Mexico and Wyoming. 

Upon his return to the East Coast in 1906, Diederich began studying sculpture at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; however, after two successful years there, during which he produced animal sculptures inspired by his Western experiences, he was expelled for “improper language.”  Together with Paul Manship, a fellow sculptor he had befriended at the academy, he continued his artistic education through extensive travels in Europe.  In particular, the young artist was inspired by the examples of Renaissance and Baroque iron work he encountered.  With the outbreak of World War I, Diederich returned to the United States, where he settled in New York and began exhibiting his animal-themed works.

Evolving out of his two-dimensional silhouette cutouts, Diederich’s wrought iron pieces combined the decorative with the practical.  According to his daughter, Diana Blake, his “work in cast iron [sic] was a very important part of his life, perhaps the most important.”[2]  No doubt, the artist enjoyed the contrast between the dark, inflexible heaviness of the material and the lively, seemingly weightless designs that ultimately resulted.  Embodying these stylistic qualities, this fire screen from the mid-1920s depicts two playing hounds, one of Diederich’s favorite themes.  Fully extended from head to tail, the hounds bound at full speed, none of their legs touching the ground.  The elongation of their forms creates a sense of dynamism and fluidity, an effect furthered by the shape of the screen itself.  For instance, the sinuous line of the inverted u-curve comprising the fire screen’s top edge echoes the smooth, curvilinear contours of the hounds’ bodies.  A complex, interlocking arrangement of the animals’ streamlined torsos, limbs and heads, Playing Hounds Fire Screen attests to Diederich’s superb sense of design.