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American Bronze Bacchus Fountain Fountain Head Wall Sculpture by Marie Zimmermann and Roman Bronze Works

Bacchus Fountain Head Wall Sculpture by Marie Zimmermann and Roman Bronze Works

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Part Number:381

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A striking Bacchanalian wall sculpture in heavy bronze designed in Classical Roman taste by noted American metalsmith and jeweler Marie Zimmermann (1879-1972) and cast by Roman Bronze Works of Greenpoint, Brooklyn circa 1915. The face of Bacchus, Roman god of wine, comes directly from the artist's estate and was displayed prominently at her home in Pike County, Pennsylvania as an outdoor fountain head. The bronze has exaggerated features surrounded by clusters of grapes, vines and leaves. Although designed as a fountain head with a water spout incorporated into the mouth, the sculpture can be mounted in or outdoors as a one-of-a-kind piece of wall decor.

Very good, original condition with crisp details, measuring 12 in. H x 10 in. W. stamped ROMAN BRONZE WORKS N-Y- under the chin. The piece is illustrated twice in The Jewelry and Metalwork of Marie Zimmermann, 2012; first on page 174, fig. 5.16, shown mounted on the exterior of Zimmermann's home in the background of a photograph taken in 1963, and again on page 318, fig. 9.45.

Over a 40 year career, Zimmermann designed imaginative and eclectic pieces for home and garden, reflecting her interests in historical design and the natural world. She modeled many of her designs in wax, a skill she developed at the Pratt Institute in New York at the beginning of her career. After receiving Zimmermann's wax model, Roman Bronze Works cast this piece using the lost wax (cire-perdu) process. Zimmermann chose bronze for a number of her larger-scale commissions, including funerary monuments, but favored copper, silver and/or gold for the majority of her smaller, ornamental tabletop designs. This bronze4 is one of only a handful of known examples of her work in bronze at this scale

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City holds the largest collection of objects by Marie Zimmermann, making their first acquisition in 1922. A variety of her designs in jewelry and metalwork are in the collections of The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Edsel & Eleanor Ford House, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Wolfsonian-Florida International University and the Columbus Museum of Art.

Provenance: The Estate of Marie Zimmermann.