Читать книгу Antiques Roadshow: 40 Years of Great Finds - Paul Atterbury, Paul Atterbury - Страница 8

One of the highlights of a rather wet Roadshow at Bodnant Gardens, Wales, in 2009 was a powerful equestrian bronze of a Sioux warrior. Furniture specialist Christopher Payne, who has written books about nineteenth century bronzes, was excited to see it, partly because of its rarity and also because it is unusual to find American bronzes of this quality in Britain.

Called Appeal to the Great Spirit, and the final sculpture in a series of four equestrian pieces known as the Epic of the Indian, it was modelled in 1909 by Cyrus Dallin and cast in Paris. The first of the series, A Signal of Peace, was shown in Chicago in 1893; the second The Medicine Man in Paris in 1899; the third, The Protest in St Louis in 1904; and the fourth, Appeal, in Paris in 1909. Born in Utah in 1861, Dallin was a prolific and well-known sculptor who produced over 240 works, many inspired by a view of American history that he shared with Frederick Remington, the other great American sculptor of this period. Dallin grew up with native North American children, developing a great respect for tribal history and culture at a time when that aspect of American history was under threat. The full-size version of Appeal to the Great Spirit has stood outside the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston since 1912. In America, there are other full-size versions of what is now seen as Dallin’s greatest work. In 1922 a small edition of small versions was issued, with other editions following until Dallin’s death in 1944. Since then, this iconic sculpture has been frequently reproduced.

Christopher Payne often picks this as one of his favourite Roadshow moments, because the bronze brought to Bodnant was one of the early casts, not a later reproduction. For that reason he valued it between £60,000 and £80,000, knowing that another early cast had sold in New York in 2005 for $120,000. He explained the bronze’s powerful message to the owner, namely that the story of native North American culture was being obliterated by the rapid development of industrialised white America, a message that perhaps resonates even more powerfully today. Hence the title – the Appeal to the Great Spirit – to save the tribe and all it represents.

The owner knew little about it, having acquired it about ten years earlier from his wife’s father, someone he described as ‘an eccentric local bank manager whose hobby was marrying wealthy heiresses’.