6: NATHANIEL CHOATE (1899-1965) PLASTER MAQUETTE 1937

Nathaniel Choate (1899-1965)
Alligator Bender (1937)
The artist's hollow cast plaster study, known as a maquette, that served as preliminary working model for the monumental carved marble sculpture titled 'Alligator Bender', installed at Brookgreen Gardens, South Carolina around 1937. Nathaniel Choate is an important African American artist whose biography is filled with interesting achievements and anecdotes, mostly related to is career as an artist. Choate first attended Harvard where he was awarded their Bowers Prize in fine arts and worked on the Harvard Lampoon, an undergraduate humor publication. Just after graduation, he studied at Academie Julian in Paris, among others, and visited a number of countries around the world. During the difficult decade of the 1930s, Nathaniel Choate received a number of large and notable public commissions working in bronze, marble and aluminum, often displaying his own interpretation of Art Deco design influence. He remained active throughout the following decades until his death in 1965. Choate was a member of the National Academy, the National Sculpture Society, the Architectural League of New York, the Ceramic Society, the Century Association and others. He also taught and exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.
Measures 31 x 30.25 x 12 inches.
Scattered chips and a hairline crack in the base.
Provenance: Purchased 25 to 30 years ago from a gallery in Pietrasanta, Italy. Pietrasanta is known as the town of marble and art where artists have for centuries traveled to procure and sculpt marble.
$6,000 - $8,000