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拍品专文
During the Great Depression, John D. Rockefeller Jr. (known as ‘Junior’ to distinguish himself from his father) was the driving force behind the financing, development, and construction of Rockefeller Center in midtown Manhattan, where Christie’s New York now makes its home. Originally envisaged as a location for a new Metropolitan Opera complex in 1928, the Stock Market Crash of 1929 meant that the Opera could no longer afford to move uptown, and within a month the land leased for the project had been reimagined by Rockefeller working in conjunction with RCA, NBC, and RKO as a mass-media entertainment complex, which would provide a hub for television, music, radio, ‘talking pictures’, and plays. Construction on the project began in 1931 and the first buildings opened in 1933; the core of the complex was completed by 1939. Considered one of the greatest projects of the Depression era, Rockefeller Center was declared a New York City landmark in 1985 and a National Historic Landmark in 1987.
The then-RCA Building, now 30 Rockefeller Plaza, the complex’s centerpiece, opened in the spring of 1933. Preparing for the building’s opening, Junior originally approached Picasso and Matisse about decorations for the lobby, both of whom declined to participate in the project. Sir Frank Brangwyn, José Maria Sert and Diego Rivera were subsequently chosen to create the building’s murals, though Rivera’s mural was later replaced over a dispute about his inclusion of a figure of Lenin. All three artists were instructed to create their murals on canvas with the figures en grisaille and Brangwyn’s designs were to include some lettering as well. The unifying theme of the decorative program was to be 'New Frontiers', encompassing aspects of modern society, including science, labor, education, travel, communication, humanitarianism, finance and spirituality.
Brangwyn’s commission, which he received in 1932 with the final product installed in December of 1933, was for four large-scale murals, each measuring 17 by 25 feet, which still decorate the entrance hall and elevator bays along the south corridor of 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Brangwyn was assigned to interpret four themes around ‘man’s relationship to society and his fellow man’ and each of the murals bears the artist’s interpretations of these themes as their title: Man Laboring, Man the Creator, Man the Master, and Man’s Ultimate Destiny. Brangwyn did not produce the canvases in situ, but instead worked on them in a room at the Brighton Pavilion, as his studio in Ditchling, Sussex, about 50 miles south of London, was not large enough for him to paint them there. They were then transported to New York by steamer for installation. Sadly, Brangwyn never saw the finished murals in situ in New York. The present work and the previous lot are studies for the second and third of Brangwyn’s murals from the series – Man The Creator and Man The Master.
The present work is a large-scale study for Man The Master, which was Brangwyn’s interpretation on the theme of ‘man’s relationships as a worker.’ This work is clearly a study in the final stages of preparation for the mural, with the foremost group of figures produced at their full scale, though with slightly less detail than is found in the finished mural. Clearly satisfied with the organization of the figures, which appear here almost identically to how they appear in the final mural, the artist used the lowest part of the canvas register to work out some of the complex mechanized parts which appear throughout the remainder of the final mural. The text in the final version of the composition reads: ‘Man The Master and Servant of the Machine, Harnessing to his Will the Forces of the Material World, Mechanizing Labor and Adding Thereto the Promise of Leisure,’ though Brangwyn clearly initially envisaged the text being placed centrally, rather than at lower right as it appears in the final version.
Man The Master is the third in the series of four murals, which in addition to interpreting the themes that Brangwyn was presented with, clearly sequentially illustrate man’s forward progress through time as well. The series of murals opens with an Edenic scene, with the figures unclothed and surrounded by a bountiful variety of animals in a lush garden, and then progresses to Man the Creator (see the previous lot), which illustrates man’s mastery of agriculture. Man the Master is reflective of the Industrial Revolution and the Machine Age, while the final mural, Man’s Ultimate Destiny, illustrates what the artist saw as the importance of Christian teachings in man’s path through life and the world.
We are grateful to Dr. Libby Horner for confirming the authenticity of this work, which will be included in her Sir Frank Brangwyn catalogue raisonné, currently in preparation.
The then-RCA Building, now 30 Rockefeller Plaza, the complex’s centerpiece, opened in the spring of 1933. Preparing for the building’s opening, Junior originally approached Picasso and Matisse about decorations for the lobby, both of whom declined to participate in the project. Sir Frank Brangwyn, José Maria Sert and Diego Rivera were subsequently chosen to create the building’s murals, though Rivera’s mural was later replaced over a dispute about his inclusion of a figure of Lenin. All three artists were instructed to create their murals on canvas with the figures en grisaille and Brangwyn’s designs were to include some lettering as well. The unifying theme of the decorative program was to be 'New Frontiers', encompassing aspects of modern society, including science, labor, education, travel, communication, humanitarianism, finance and spirituality.
Brangwyn’s commission, which he received in 1932 with the final product installed in December of 1933, was for four large-scale murals, each measuring 17 by 25 feet, which still decorate the entrance hall and elevator bays along the south corridor of 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Brangwyn was assigned to interpret four themes around ‘man’s relationship to society and his fellow man’ and each of the murals bears the artist’s interpretations of these themes as their title: Man Laboring, Man the Creator, Man the Master, and Man’s Ultimate Destiny. Brangwyn did not produce the canvases in situ, but instead worked on them in a room at the Brighton Pavilion, as his studio in Ditchling, Sussex, about 50 miles south of London, was not large enough for him to paint them there. They were then transported to New York by steamer for installation. Sadly, Brangwyn never saw the finished murals in situ in New York. The present work and the previous lot are studies for the second and third of Brangwyn’s murals from the series – Man The Creator and Man The Master.
The present work is a large-scale study for Man The Master, which was Brangwyn’s interpretation on the theme of ‘man’s relationships as a worker.’ This work is clearly a study in the final stages of preparation for the mural, with the foremost group of figures produced at their full scale, though with slightly less detail than is found in the finished mural. Clearly satisfied with the organization of the figures, which appear here almost identically to how they appear in the final mural, the artist used the lowest part of the canvas register to work out some of the complex mechanized parts which appear throughout the remainder of the final mural. The text in the final version of the composition reads: ‘Man The Master and Servant of the Machine, Harnessing to his Will the Forces of the Material World, Mechanizing Labor and Adding Thereto the Promise of Leisure,’ though Brangwyn clearly initially envisaged the text being placed centrally, rather than at lower right as it appears in the final version.
Man The Master is the third in the series of four murals, which in addition to interpreting the themes that Brangwyn was presented with, clearly sequentially illustrate man’s forward progress through time as well. The series of murals opens with an Edenic scene, with the figures unclothed and surrounded by a bountiful variety of animals in a lush garden, and then progresses to Man the Creator (see the previous lot), which illustrates man’s mastery of agriculture. Man the Master is reflective of the Industrial Revolution and the Machine Age, while the final mural, Man’s Ultimate Destiny, illustrates what the artist saw as the importance of Christian teachings in man’s path through life and the world.
We are grateful to Dr. Libby Horner for confirming the authenticity of this work, which will be included in her Sir Frank Brangwyn catalogue raisonné, currently in preparation.