OLIN LEVI WARNER
(American, 1844-1896)
Julian Alden Weir
1880, bronze
signed Olin Warner, dated 1880, and inscribed Alden Weir on the reverse
height: 22 in.
Provenance: Julian Alden Weir, the sitter; by descent to his daughter, Mrs. George Page Ely (née Caroline Weir), 1919; by descent to her daughter, Mrs. Gregory Smith (née Anne Weir Ely); by descent within the family to a private California collection; private collection, New York.
Literature: Thayer Tolles, ed., American Sculpture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Volume I: A
Catalogue of Works by Artists Born before 1865. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
1999), pp. 213 – 215, no. 89, illus. (another version).
Other Notes: In 1877, Olin Levi Warner became a founding member of the Society of American Artists, through which he likely met Julian Alden Weir, a fellow artist, and future sitter. Warner’s celebrated portrait bust of Weir shows the young artist at age twenty-eight and was immediately praised as “the finest, most, virile piece of work yet exhibited in New York,” when the plaster was shown at the Annual Exhibition of the Society of American Artists in 1880. The turned head, asymmetrical shoulders, and facial expression of Weir are reminiscent of Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux’s naturalistic modeling, and perhaps influenced by Warner’s time spent as Carpeaux’s studio assistant. Warner later submitted a bronze cast of Weir to the 1881 Paris Salon, his first time in the exhibition, and included it in shows at the National Academy of Design (1888), Paris Universal Exposition (1889), a retrospective exhibition at the Society of American Artists (1892), and Worlds Columbian Exhibition (1893).