Lot Details
Lot 2486
Samuel Rothbort
1882-1971
Seated Figure with Sea Form and Bird
Signed S. Rothbort
Granite
14 1/2 x 8 1/4 x 9 1/4 inches
After a decade of creating decorative paintings for grand homes in what is today East Harlem, Samuel Rothbort was included in the inaugural exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in 1916. He became a member of the Brooklyn Society of Artists and exhibited with the Salons of America, whose founder, Hamilton Easter Field, was a staunch advocate of his painting. He only turned to making sculpture in the early 1930s, initially employing barn doors and fieldstones on his property in Rosedale, Long Island. In November 1933, a reviewer for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle observed of his sculpture exhibited at the Grant Studios, "Mr. Rothbort...uses tree trunks, old gate posts and drift wood for his medium and finds in their forms and texture which exposure has given them the suggestion for the forms which he carves. The results are imaginative and evocative because of the suggestion that they have been released from their material that confined them."
The reviewer intuited a fundamental concept held by Rothbort and other direct carvers such as Robert Laurent, John Flannagan, Chaim Gross, and William Zorach, that in touching a piece of material, an artist brought it new life.
Dr. Joan Marter has written that "Rothbort's desire to develop the untapped beauty within natural sustances, such as marble, stone and wood, results in carvings that embody universal human themes, religious proverbs, and abstract concepts." (Dr. Joan Marter, "Samuel Rothbort, a Modernist in America," Samuel Rothbort: Direct Carver, New York: Hollis Taggart Galleries, 2003, p. 14)
Born from the material itself, Rothbort's subjects are diverse, joyous celebrations, exploring elemental themes such as life and birth. Emerging from stone and wood, they encompass Old Testament characters; whimsical self-portraits; gently allusive, nascent shapes; and fantastical creatures melding animal and human forms. The present work is one of these, incorporating bird and sea forms locked in a stone embrace with a human figure.
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