TitlePhilomela
Artist
John Gregory
(American, 1879 - 1958)
Date1930
MediumMarble
DimensionsOverall: 13 3/4 × 7 1/2 × 8 3/4 in.
Other (Sculpture): 10 1/4 × 7 1/2 × 8 3/4 in.
Other (Base): 3 1/2 × 6 × 6 in.
SignedSigned at truncation: "1930 J. Gregory"
SubmissionNA diploma presentation, 1934
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number40-S
Label TextThis bust is a marble replica of the head of Gregory's life-size, full-length kneeling bronze figure of Philomela which he designed in 1919-20 for the garden of the Manhasset, Long Island, home of Mrs. Payne Whitney. The original plaster of the full piece won a medal of honor from the Architectural League of New York in 1921, and was exhibited extensively during the early 1920s. A fourteen-inch reduction of the full piece is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.Kineton Parkes reported in 1933 that the head had been reproduced in marble, and wrote of the full-length: "This is now widely and favourably known in America, and in England, too, for it has been extensively illustrated in both countries. It is a remarkably pleasing composition in which the subject provides the detail . . . . it is cunningly modeled."
Philomela, a character from classical mythology, was fooled by Tereus, king of Thrace, into believing that Procne, her sister and his wife, was dead, leaving Philomela free to marry him. When the truth was revealed that Procne was not dead, but had only been silenced by having her tongue pulled out, the sisters sought revenge on Tereus by killing his son and serving him to his father as dinner. The gods were not amused by the women's method of vendeta and, as punishment, turned Procne into a swallow and Philomela into a nightingale. Tereus did not get off entirely; he was transformed into a hawk.
In the full-length version of his sculpture Gregory therefore presented Philomela as a winged creature, still human, only just becoming a bird. Considering the results of her metamorphoses, she made an appropriate subject for garden sculpture. The most well-known interpretation of the mythological lady is in a poem by Matthew Arnold, a work which may well have influenced Gregory. Arnold placed his Philomela on a "fragrant lawn" in "the moonlight on this English grass," evocations that understandably could have acted as nostalgic inspiration for the British-born sculptor.
[c. 1855]
