Art Institute of Chicago

Whirlwind

Jonathan Scott Hartley (American, 1845–1912)

Date

1896

Medium

Bronze

Culture

New York City

Department

Arts of the Americas

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

Jonathan Scott Hartley first worked in the studio of American sculptor Erastus Dow Palmer before training in several schools in Europe. Whirlwind secured the sculptor’s reputation when it was exhibited in New York in 1878. Embodying intense energy and dynamism, the female figure leans forward with her arms raised to steady herself in the wind, her legs tightly tangled in a swirl of drapery. This is a copy of the second version of the sculpture that Hartley exhibited in 1896. It is an early, rare American example of the method of bronze casting known as “lost-wax”—a process that granted sculptors more agency in producing an accurate translation of a clay model into bronze.

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