Skip to main content
Read page text
page 56
3 FIG 3 Nancy Witcher Langhorne, Viscountess Astor CH, MP (1879–1964), 1930, Joseph Davidson, bronze with marble socle (not shown), 46 x 19 x 29cm (with socle), Cliveden Estate, Buckinghamshire Photo: © National Trust Images/Christopher Warleigh-Lack re-touch those eyes of yours – not yours, the bust’s. Yours are alright as they are, it’s mine that are in trouble.’16 Obviously, the wax and clay models were too fragile to travel from Paris to London and Davidson was keen that Astor would come to the studio as soon as she could, as both were ready for some reworking. Astor replied to say that she couldn’t manage a visit to Paris until early December. In the same letter she remarked that the ‘new thing of Bernard Shaw was far better than the old’.17 She added that she was glad as ‘I wanted you to make a success of it’. Astor’s tone seems almost instructional. She had introduced Davidson to Shaw and felt that the bust should please both Shaw and his wife. Davidson was pleased to know that Shaw had appreciated the head he had made, but he was still insistent that Astor should come to Paris earlier than she planned: ‘the wax and the terra-cotta clay are screaming to be retouched – and as they are both very fragile mediums, I sympathise with them tremendously.’18 Replying the next day, 21 November 1930, Astor refused to give in. She reminded Davidson that she was a busy MP: ‘you understand what my life is and this has been the busiest Autumn Session I can remember.’19 In the end Davidson accepted that Astor’s time was limited and waited for her to come to Paris in early December. Perhaps the bust was completed too hastily or was not what Astor expected – from a letter to Davidson on 12 February 1931, it sounds as if the portrait was not considered entirely successful: The price agreed was half Davidson’s usual rate of $10,000. Davidson could clearly command high prices for his work: by contrast, casts of Dancers, by his fellow American sculptor, Harriet Whitney Frishmuth, were priced at £450 in 1928. But to secure the Astor commission, a 50 per cent reduction to the asking price was an acceptable deal to Davidson: he wrote to Astor in early September 1930 to confirm that he would take the commission at that price on the condition that: You will furnish [...] half the witty conversation necessary to keep life and spirit in the face. With men like Shaw, Wells, Dawes, etc., etc., I usually have to furnish all the entertainment. And, second you must undertake to find other poor heads to be wholly done in every sense of the word.15 I returned from St Moritz to find your lovely bust – at least I think it’s lovely, but alas others don’t. They all say it makes me look too old and that it’s not broad enough across the forehead. As a matter of fact, there is a good deal of adverse feeling. What are we going to do about it?20 Who the ‘others’ were or where the ‘adverse’ feeling came from is not made explicit. It is likely that Astor was disappointed by the bust as she had been by Davidson’s bust of Shaw. Astor’s response to the sculpture must have been a blow to Davidson. A month earlier, he had written to her: I’ll run over to London and we can look at the busts together and hear all the pros and cons – there are sure to be both. Anyway, here in Paris, your bust has been proclaimed my chef-d’oeuvre by all those who have seen it.21 The sculptor’s feelings about the adverse response to his work prompted him to write to Astor on 14 February 1931 in a tone of desperation: On Saturday 4 October 1930, Astor wrote to agree a time to come to Davidson’s studio in Paris and sit for him on the following Wednesday. Astor was impatient and wanted to be assured that the sitting would not take long. Following the first sitting on 8 October, Davidson must have worked quite quickly as he wrote on 14 November to ask Astor to visit the studio again, as he had produced a wax model for the bronze and a clay model for the terracotta. More work, he wrote, was needed to get the likeness right: ‘I want to I’ll be in London, will you be there? If so you and I will gather our forces and do battle with the dissidents. I will cry it from the mountain-tops that this bust that I did of you is worthy of the both of us. Don’t lose courage – hang on till I come over, and I promise you a complete victory.22 The correspondence does not reveal if the two ever did join forces to win over the dissidents and nothing more was
page 57
said about the bust. Astor did congratulate Davidson on his exhibition at Knoedler’s in New York and hoped that this would encourage further commissions, although she didn’t offer to find sitters for him. Astor’s only other documented intervention to introduce Davidson to a potential sitter was the invitation that she extended to Henry Ford and the artist to dine at 4 St James Square on the same occasion. Davidson recalled that while looking with Ford at the prints of the Shaw bust, conversation turned to art: ‘Ford argued that nothing static was beautiful, only things in movement were beautiful. As he said this, he moved his hand through space. It was a beautiful hand.’23 How Astor came to view the bust over time is not recorded in Davidson’s file. She had two casts, one of which was on display at Cliveden at one point in the Library, but not in the Great Hall, where she had placed Sargent’s 1908 portrait. Davidson’s career continued to flourish and he sculpted a range of 20th-century luminaries, such as Mahatma Gandhi, William Randolph Hearst, James Joyce, and Franklin D. Roosevelt (a cast of whose bust is at Chartwell). He also produced a portrait of the popular American singer Frank Sinatra, and the poet Walt Whitman. Astor’s patronage was made possible by her wealth and social position. Astor had no interest in pushing the boundaries of artistic expression in portraiture at that time. Davidson was a safe choice for a piece that was intended for her private space at Cliveden. Astor was an active participant in the creative process, vigorously expressing her view of Davidson’s work in the case of his busts of Shaw and of herself. As patron and artist, the two were well matched: both were energetic, passionate and highly sociable. The fact that Astor did not like the Davidson portrait of her is very clear and she let him know it. Davidson himself was attracted by Astor’s fame. His style was not to over-soften the features of his female sitters. In 1920, the American edition of Vogue had run a feature entitled ‘Women of the Social World as Seen by the Sculptor’ that showed the work of contemporary sculptors. It mainly featured the work of those who had produced portrait heads of wealthy female socialites.24 Works by the sculptors Elie Nadelman and Eleanor Mortimer were praised for their ‘sensitive modelling’ and ‘fine simplicity’. However, Davidson’s portrait of Mary Cass Canfield was viewed as a ‘bold and unusual treatment’. As with his bust of Astor, the sitter looks at the viewer square on with a direct gaze, uncompromising and strong. Davidson’s style of sculpting women in a head-on pose was well established by 1930 and his fame as a celebrity portraitist was assured. The fact that he was mentioned in 20 articles in Vanity Fair between 1914 and 1928 testifies to this. It is unlikely that Astor would have been unaware of Davidson’s style. Her negative reaction to the bronze was largely a sign that she didn’t see herself in the portrait that Davidson had produced. Patronage in portraiture is an expression of self, an opportunity to ‘negotiate moments of self-definition’.25 Astor simply did not fully identify with this image of her. Although she commented rather abrasively on the portrait, some of her disappointment might be attributed to a problem that Davidson had raised himself in making the bronze – namely, trying to capture a good likeness in the eyes. Contemporary and later photographs of Astor show that even in old age, she had a light and vitality in her eyes that was perhaps di cult to convey in bronze. Astor was familiar with lively images of herself, captured in fluid brush strokes and velvety charcoal lines and through the camera lens. Perhaps she did not anticipate how different a portrait in bronze would be compared to more animated forms of representation. Yet, in fairness, Davidson’s portrait of Astor is not only a convincing likeness of her in 1930, but a perceptive comment on the woman who held a unique place in British society at that time. FIG 4 Nancy Witcher Langhorne, Viscountess Astor CH, MP (1879–1964), 1930, Joseph Davidson, bronze with marble socle (not shown), 46 x 19 x 29cm (with socle), Cliveden Estate, Buckinghamshire Photo: © National Trust Images/Christopher Warleigh-Lack 4 Oonagh Kennedy is the National Trust’s Curator at Cliveden. 1. B. Fortune, ‘Davidson, Jo (1883–1952), sculptor’, American National Biography online edition [Accessed 2 February 2018] http:// www.anb.org/view/10.1093/ anb/9780198606697.001.0001/ anb9780198606697–e-1700206]. 2. Ibid. 3. J.F. Kienitz, ‘Jo Davidson’, The Wisconsin Magazine of History, vol. 1, no. 3 (March 1948), p. 268. 4. J. Davidson, Between Sittings: An Informal Autobiography of Jo Davidson, New York, 1951, p . 253. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 7. Library of Congress, Washington, Manuscript Division, Jo Davidson Papers, Box 11. 8. Ibid 9. Ibid. 10. Davidson, op. cit., pp. 86–87. 11. Ibid, p. 254. 12. Ibid. 13. Library of Congress, Washington, Manuscript Division, Jo Davidson Papers, Box 11. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid. 23. Davidson, op. cit., p. 255. 24. Vogue, New York, vol. 56, no. 10 (1 November 1920), p. 70. 25. Cynthia Lawrence (ed.), Women and Art in Early Modern Europe: Patrons, Collectors, and Connoisseurs, Pennsylvania, 1997, p. 17.

Page Text

View plaintext

3

FIG 3 Nancy Witcher Langhorne, Viscountess Astor CH, MP (1879–1964), 1930, Joseph Davidson, bronze with marble socle (not shown), 46 x 19 x 29cm (with socle), Cliveden Estate, Buckinghamshire Photo: © National Trust Images/Christopher Warleigh-Lack re-touch those eyes of yours – not yours, the bust’s. Yours are alright as they are, it’s mine that are in trouble.’16

Obviously, the wax and clay models were too fragile to travel from Paris to London and Davidson was keen that Astor would come to the studio as soon as she could, as both were ready for some reworking. Astor replied to say that she couldn’t manage a visit to Paris until early December. In the same letter she remarked that the ‘new thing of Bernard Shaw was far better than the old’.17 She added that she was glad as ‘I wanted you to make a success of it’.

Astor’s tone seems almost instructional. She had introduced Davidson to Shaw and felt that the bust should please both Shaw and his wife. Davidson was pleased to know that Shaw had appreciated the head he had made, but he was still insistent that Astor should come to Paris earlier than she planned: ‘the wax and the terra-cotta clay are screaming to be retouched – and as they are both very fragile mediums, I sympathise with them tremendously.’18 Replying the next day, 21 November 1930, Astor refused to give in. She reminded Davidson that she was a busy MP: ‘you understand what my life is and this has been the busiest Autumn Session I can remember.’19

In the end Davidson accepted that Astor’s time was limited and waited for her to come to Paris in early December. Perhaps the bust was completed too hastily or was not what Astor expected – from a letter to Davidson on 12 February 1931, it sounds as if the portrait was not considered entirely successful:

The price agreed was half Davidson’s usual rate of $10,000. Davidson could clearly command high prices for his work: by contrast, casts of Dancers, by his fellow American sculptor, Harriet Whitney Frishmuth, were priced at £450 in 1928. But to secure the Astor commission, a 50 per cent reduction to the asking price was an acceptable deal to Davidson: he wrote to Astor in early September 1930 to confirm that he would take the commission at that price on the condition that:

You will furnish [...] half the witty conversation necessary to keep life and spirit in the face.

With men like Shaw, Wells, Dawes, etc., etc., I usually have to furnish all the entertainment. And, second you must undertake to find other poor heads to be wholly done in every sense of the word.15

I returned from St Moritz to find your lovely bust – at least I think it’s lovely, but alas others don’t. They all say it makes me look too old and that it’s not broad enough across the forehead. As a matter of fact, there is a good deal of adverse feeling. What are we going to do about it?20

Who the ‘others’ were or where the ‘adverse’ feeling came from is not made explicit. It is likely that Astor was disappointed by the bust as she had been by Davidson’s bust of Shaw.

Astor’s response to the sculpture must have been a blow to Davidson. A month earlier, he had written to her:

I’ll run over to London and we can look at the busts together and hear all the pros and cons – there are sure to be both. Anyway, here in Paris, your bust has been proclaimed my chef-d’oeuvre by all those who have seen it.21

The sculptor’s feelings about the adverse response to his work prompted him to write to Astor on 14 February 1931 in a tone of desperation:

On Saturday 4 October 1930, Astor wrote to agree a time to come to Davidson’s studio in Paris and sit for him on the following Wednesday. Astor was impatient and wanted to be assured that the sitting would not take long. Following the first sitting on 8 October, Davidson must have worked quite quickly as he wrote on 14 November to ask Astor to visit the studio again, as he had produced a wax model for the bronze and a clay model for the terracotta. More work, he wrote, was needed to get the likeness right: ‘I want to

I’ll be in London, will you be there? If so you and I will gather our forces and do battle with the dissidents. I will cry it from the mountain-tops that this bust that I did of you is worthy of the both of us. Don’t lose courage – hang on till I come over, and I promise you a complete victory.22

The correspondence does not reveal if the two ever did join forces to win over the dissidents and nothing more was

read next page

My Bookmarks

Buy this Book
Skip to main content