Onsite
Highest Bidder
$3,750
Sold
sold
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- Estimate
- $4,000 / $5,000
Description
28" (71 cm.) Solid domed bisque head with flanged neck, sculpted short hair in casual tousled style with well-defined sculpting details, tiny blue glass eyes, ochre eyeshadow, rounded nose with accented nostrils, open mouth in laughing expression, tongue, row of four porcelain teeth, original muslin body, composition arms and legs, antique costume. Condition: generally excellent. Marks: Gladdie, Copyright (sic) by Helen W. Jensen Germany 1005/1430. Comments: the model appeared in the Borgfeldt catalog of 1929 under the trade name of Gladdie, made in Germany. Helen Webster Jensen, born in Chicago in 1896 studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, and in 1928 moved to Santa Monica, California with her husband where the two pursued a career in portrait bust sculpting; many of their commissioned sculptures exist in the Los Angeles area. She died in Seattle in 1990, and it is likely that Gladdie was the only doll model she sculpted. Value Points: superb sculpting portraying a beautiful laughing child with well-defined laughter lines and dimples, finest bisque, enhanced by knowledge of its designer. This example is in rare Exhibition size, of which few other examples are known.
Stuart's Take
One might skim over this thinking, "Oh, a Gladdie, ok." But the reality is the size of this doll, most likely made for exhibition, is extraordinary and the pinnacle of rarity. As well, Helen Jensen, another of the important American female artists that helped to define the bridge years between the two world wars, deserves far more respect as an artist. Another fascinating irony, Helen Jensen, though spending most of her life in California, would at the end of her life live in Seattle where she would die in 1990, exactly at the time when Rosalie would open her museum.