Edith Barretto Stevens Parsons Figurative Sculptures

EDITH BARETTO PARSONS United States, 1878-1956 "Turtle Baby" (1919) - Designed as a Fountain Patinated bronze signed to edge "E.B. PARSONS COPYRIGHT...

Two bronze bookends featuring two children playing by Edith Barretto Parsons, marked with copyright 1913, produced by the Gorham Co foundry. / BIO: Edith Barretto Stevens, grandmother of Serena Pelissier, was born in Halifax, Virginia, in 1878, as her parents were residing there at the time. She died in New Canaan, Connecticut in 1956. When she was six years old the family moved from Virginia to New Jersey. She said that the move inspired her to become an artist: the Virginia property had been so beautiful, and she found the fiercely structured garden in New Jersey so ugly, that she decided to create work that celebrated the beauty of untouched nature. Her figures are pure in their natural state, with no added man-made ornamentation or sentimentality. In her best known figures of small children and animals, we can detect a connection, very subtly rendered, between the animals and the children: the Duck Baby’s hair, for example, flies out at the side, resembling little wings; the Baby Pan has tiny “horns” hidden in the curls on his forehead. There is that hint at connection to be found in each of them. She studied from the age of 15 at the Art Students’ League in New York City, with, among others, Daniel Chester French, George L. Barnard and John Twachtman, and she worked as apprentice to James Earle Fraser. In 1903, at the age of 25, she was appointed to design the pediment of the main entrance to the Liberal Arts Building at the St. Louis fair. In 1908 she married Howard Parsons, one of the many direct descendants of Charles Willson Peale and the slightly fewer descendants of Rembrandt Peale...

A sensational and most charming American turn of the century patinated bronze statue of 'Duck Baby', signed Edith Barretto Parsons EGF I C. The bronze is raised by a hexagonal mottled base where the adorable baby stands...

A precious rendition of childhood executed by Edith Parsons and cast by the Gorham Co. foundry in New York, this exquisite little work captures a young child with his hand outstretch...