Actaeon

Educated at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia and at the Art Students League of New York, Manship won the 1909 Rome Prize. His education straddled classicizing influences and modernist approaches to sculptural form, and included enthusiasm for newly excavated material from the ancient world. Manship approached the Greek myth of Diana and Actaeon for over a decade through sketches and studies. His interest culminated in two monumental sculptures for a 1925 exhibition in New York. The story is at core a tale of visual transgression and revenge: the mortal Actaeon sees the goddess Diana naked and is punished, transformed into a stag, hunted and ripped to shreds by his own hounds. The dynamic composition of this version is activated by the dog’s movement across the base and by the angularity of Actaeon’s thrusting pose. The sensuously modeled treatment of the muscular figure, the lustrous polish of the bronze, and the fluidity of the forms bespeak the classicizing tendency and art deco vocabulary for which Manship is famous.