Tobacconist Figure: Indian

Date1875-1900

Attributed to William Demuth and Company

Mediumcast zinc, paint

DimensionsOverall: 64 3/8 x 24 5/8 x 19 1/4in. (163.5 x 62.5 x 48.9cm) Other (Base alone): 9 x 19 1/2 x 19 1/2in. (22.9 x 49.5 x 49.5cm)

Credit LineAcquisition funded by Winthrop Rockefeller

Object number1956.805.1

DescriptionA full-length, freestanding, slightly less than life-size, painted, hollow metal casting of a female figure shown in the round and wearing Indian attire, fixed on a trapezoidal platform. Her proper R arm is raised, palm forward, as though in salute. Her proper L arm is bent at the elbow and, along her forearm, she supports various bundles of tobacco. A long red, cape lined in a gold color hangs down her back; it is supported by an ornamental chain fastened around her neck. The red side of the cape is slightly textured. (Is it meant to suggest a blanket?). The cape hangs to the ground.
She wears large, flat, gold colored earrings and a gold bracelet on each wrist. Other ornaments, including a medallion, are hung around her neck. She wears a red, short-sleeved top (the sleeves being "slashed" to reveal an interior gold color) and a short (above the knee) length fringed skirt with a red belt that is pointed in front; two tiers of feathers (the upper row green, the lower brown) hang from the belt and over the top of the skirt. A gold band with three points on it circles her head. Her legs appear to be bare. Her high-top footware resembles shoes more than moccasins, although scoring along the lower edges of the vamps suggests puckers of leather. The shoes or moccasins are red and green with gold toes.
The subject gazes into the distance, her head turned slightly towards the viewer's left. Short eyelashes are painted on. Her black hair falls loose down her back. Her fingernails are a grayish-silver color.
The casting captures the outlines of what may have been a "fabrication hole" in the top center of her head, i.e., a hole in the wooden prototype into which a metal rod was fixed for ease in handling and turning the carving in production.
The back of the casting has a 1/2-inch diameter hole below center.
Label TextWeathering took a toll on wooden carvings that were used outside. Accordingly, about 1868, William Demuth (1835-1911) approached Morris J. Seelig (1809-?), a fellow German immigrant who operated a Brooklyn foundry, proposing that Seelig cast several Demuth figures in zinc. By 1869, Demuth was marketing several of these innovative cast metal figures, which were indeed more durable than their wooden corollaries. Demuth was proud to have been the first in the country to offer them, and he touted them heavily, showing more than twice as many cast zinc as wooden figures in his 1875 catalogue and advertising additional models via broadsides.
This painted cast zinc tobacconist figure was one of several versions derived from the same basic mold. Listed as "Squaw No. 61" in Demuth's 1875 catalogue, the original cost was $65. One variation included a papoose.
ProvenanceProbably Anthony W. Pendergast (see n. 1 below); to Rudolf Frederick Haffenreffer, Jr. (1874-1954), Bristol, RI; on 10 October 1956, sold at Parke-Bernet Galleries, Inc., New York, NY; purchased at the foregoing auction by The Old Print Shop, New York, NY, acting as agent for CWF.

n. 1: Ownership prior to Haffenreffer is undocumented. However, Fried ("Bilbliography"), p. 238, states that "most" of the Haffenreffer figures sold by Parke-Bernet in 1956 were "once part of the collection of Anthony J. [sic] Pendergast." Also, Krech ("Bibliography"), p. 115, states that Haffenreffer tended to buy entire collections at a time.

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