Pelican and Fish

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TitlePelican and Fish

Artist Bruce Moore (1905 - 1980)

Daten.d.

MediumPlaster

DimensionsOverall: 14 1/4 × 8 × 9 in.

SignedInscribed: Bruce Moore

SubmissionNA diploma presentation, May 18, 1943

Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY

Object number81-S

Label TextMoore designed Pelican and Fish between 1933 and 1937 while working in Westport, Connecticut, and New York City. Though he had used the theme several times, this conception, which shows the pelican with its head thrown back in the process of swallowing a fish, was invented as a memorial fountain, three feet in height, for a park in Pratt, Kansas, in honor of Mrs. C. A. Sloan. The blend of realism with a certain amount of humor as seen here is typical of Moore's animal work. When the original full size version of the sculpture was shown at the National Academy's annual exhibition in 1935, it earned the Speyer Prize.
Moore presented this tinted plaster, a one-third reduction of the original, to the Academy as his diploma work in May, 1943, with the promise that it would be replaced by a bronze cast once the war was over and the government again permitted castings to be made. That replacement was never realized.
Two plaster replicas of this sculpture are in the collection of the sculptor's widow in Washington, D.C.; and a aluminum one is at Brookgreen Gardens in South Carolina.