Young Pan

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TitleYoung Pan

Artist Edward Francis McCartan (1879 - 1947)

Daten.d.

MediumBronze

DimensionsOverall: 30 1/4 × 10 × 10 1/2 in.

SubmissionNA diploma presentation, March 16, 1926

Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY

Object number78-S

Label TextIn this full-length figure, the sculptor's diploma work, McCartan depicts a small boy, nude except for a swirling cloth or animal skin supported by a belt. He holds the pipe which identifies him as Pan to his lips and wears a wreath in his hair. He is accompanied by three frogs who sit at his feet on the front edge of the sculpture's base.
Also known as "Piping Pan" or simply "Pan", the sculpture was modeled for a garden in White Plains, New York, probably around 1913 and shortly after McCartan returned from Paris. (Cortissoz inaccurately referred to the sculpture as McCartan's "first production"). It was in 1913 that a cast of it, owned by Felix M. Warburg, was exhibited at the National Academy's winter exhibition (cat. no. 44). Patterson noted that Warburg's was "the first copy" of the work, indicating that it may have been his garden for which the figure was intended; and Conner and Rosencranz have noted its similarities to Frederick MacMonnies' very popular Pan of Rohallion of 1890. In 1915, a cast of Pan was shown at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco.
Both the Roman Bronze Works and the Gorham Company made casts of McCartan's Pan in at least two sizes, the just over 30-inch version, as seen in the Academy's example, and a larger, 56-inch version. (An example of the latter was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Exhibition of American Sculpture in 1918). In a letter written in 1922 to Mrs. Quinton of the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, McCarten stated that the edition of casts of the Pan had been limited to six.
A version of this sculpture, also in bronze, was once in the collection of the Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, New York; and another of the same size as the Academy's is now in a private collection in Minneapolis, Minnesota.