Flight of Night
Artist
Paul Howard Manship
(American, 1885 - 1966)
Date1916
Mediumsculpture; Bronze, black patina
Dimensions18 x 14 x 4 in.
ClassificationsSculpture
Credit LineGift of Mr. and Mrs. Richard Scheuch
Terms
Object number1973.111
DescriptionSoon after creating "Flight of Night" in 1916, Manship enlarged the work, almost doubling its size to thirty-five inches, including the base. He produced a number of casts in both the small and large sizes from the two original plasters, which remained in his studio until his death. The smaller version have patinas of green, brown, or black, while the larger versions feature only black. When the sculpture was first shown, at the Berlin Photographic Company in New York in 1916, critics noted its marked idealism and symmetry, which the sculptor had derived from archaic and classical Greek sculptures. (1) East Indian art has also been cited as an inspiration by numerous scholars. (2)Various casts of the sculpture were shown during Manship's lifetime, notably at the 1917 annual of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, at the 1922 annual of the Art Institute of Chicago, in the "Exposition d'Art Americain" by the Association Franco-Americaine d'Expositions de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris in 1923, and in the Manship retrospective at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., in 1958.
In its composition and theme, that of levitation, "Flight of Night" prefigures and is related to the sculptor's "Diana" (1925), "Prometheus" (1934; Rockefeller Plaza, New York), "Evening" (1938), and "Night" (1938), all of which depict a crescent-shaped figure running or flying through space. These sculptures are typical of Manship's tendency to design works along a single plane with a decidedly frontal orientation, as though they were conceived as relief sculptures rather than as figures in the round.
Other casts of "Flight of Night" are at the Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio; Minnesota Museum of Art, Saint Paul; Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut; Detroit Institute of Arts; and Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
DBD
Bibliography:
Paul Vitry, "Paul Manship: Sculpteur Americain" (Paris: Gazette des Beaux Arts, 1927); Edwin Murtha, "Paul Manship" (New York: Macmillian, 1957); Gloria Kittleson, et al., "Paul Manship: Changing Taste in America" (Saint Paul: Minnesota Museum of Art, 1985); John Manship, "Paul Manship" (New York: Abbeville Press, 1989); Harry Rand, "Paul Manship", exhib. cat. (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989).
NOTES:
1. "Paul Manship's Work in Sculpture," "Outlook" 112 (March 8, 1916): 542-42; George Humber, "Paul Manship," "New Republic" 6 (March 25, 1916): 207-9; and A. E. Gallatin, "The Sculpture of Paul Manship," "Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art" 11 (October 1916): 218-22.
2. See, for example, Gloria Kittleson, et al., "Paul Manship", p. 71.
On View
Not on view
