TitleThe Rabbi's Daughter
Artist
Herbert Adams
(American, 1858 - 1945)
Daten.d.
MediumBronze
DimensionsOverall: 18 1/2 × 14 × 9 1/2 in.
SubmissionNA diploma presentation
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number1-S
Label TextThis bust is part of a series of images of women that Adams began in 1887 with the bust of his future wife, Adeline Pond. The series includes portraits, as in the bust of Adeline, and ideal works, as in La Jeunesse (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), done in the early 1890s, about the same time as The Rabbi's Daughter.The source for Adams's conception of The Rabbi's Daughter is not known, although it may be a portrait. It is not unlike the bust of Adeline Pond, although a certain amount of idealization in both works must be taken into account. Adams is known to have used earlier portrait busts as the basis for later ideal figures.
Lorado Taft confused this work with La Jeunesse, which he described under the title of The Rabbi's Daughter in his History of American Sculpture. Taft also wrote that The Rabbi's Daughter was shown at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo; however, this may be an extension of his confusion of the two busts. The exposition catalogue number 1481 is Portrait of a Lady (Bronze), a title that could apply to either work. Katherine Holler, who evidently knew the bust only from a photograph, mistook it for a work in polychrome marble. No replicas or copies of The Rabbi's Daughter are known.
Adams apparently fulfilled his National Academy election requirement on a provisional basis, perhaps to be sure to abide by the one-year deadline to do so. The acceptance of his diploma presentation is not recorded in Academy minutes. However, it is clearly the plaster of The Rabbi's Daughter that is seen in the background of a photograph of the annual Academy banquet of 1900, the social conclusion to the annual meeting, at which Adams took his seat as a qualified Academician. Evidently he had replaced the plaster with the present bronze sometime before preparation of the 1911 catalogue of the collection, in which this work is listed as a bronze.
