Skip to main content
Flight of Europa is a three-dimensional bronze sculpture with a green patina and a reddish undertone. A nude young woman with a drape across her lap sits cross-legged and facing backward on the back of a bull. A winged cupid is whispering in her left ear. The bull, with its highly developed musculature, spreads all four of his legs in a running position. Four diving dolphins support the bull. The bronze rests on a plinth of mottled red marble.
Drawn from Greek mythology, the tale of Europa and the bull is one of the many amorous exploits of the Olympian god Zeus. Noticing a lovely Phoenician princess, he disguised himself as a bull. At first timid, Europa gradually warms to the beast, places garlands in his horns, and then climbs on his back. The bull then dashes into the sea and takes her to the island of Crete, where he removes his disguise and seduces her. The story parodies the human-like foibles of the gods.
Manship made several versions of the story in marble and in bronze. The first bronze, Europa and the Bull, 1922, is more one sided and less dynamic. It features the maiden leaning against the recumbent bull, caressing his head and a horn with upraised arms. Overall it is more sensuous and massive than the more lyrical and energized second bronze, Flight of Europa, 1925, with the bull taking flight—as indicated by the title—with his short legs outspread and his powerful head bowed. His physique and position mirror those on the Vaphio Cups, gold repoussé vessels from the Minoan era of Crete. Europa sits erectly, apparently unperturbed by her fate, which Cupid may be explaining to her. Like many of Manship’s smaller sculptures, Flight of Europa involves a familiar narrative focusing on the interaction of humans and animals. Manship made twenty casts of both versions and several carved replicas of each. Both the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Brookgreen Gardens in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, own gilded examples of Flight of Europa.
The composition of Flight of Europa is delicately balanced, from the fine detail of hair to the broader treatment of flesh and muscles. Her erect posture serves as a counterpoint to the horizontal thrust of the bull. Movement is implied by the heavy forequarters of the bull and his tenuous position on four diving dolphins. The overall graceful lines and the sense of streamlined elegance mirror the emergent Art Deco style as exemplified by such structures as New York’s Chrysler Building. While the expression on the bull’s face is one of glee, hers is more restrained; together they evoke Manship’s “simplicity and spontaneity—the aristocratic dignity of the type!”
Notes:
[1] Manship, “The Decorative Value of Greek Sculpture” (lecture, American Academy in Rome, May 15, 1912), quoted in John Manship, Paul Manship (New York: Abbeville Press, 1989), 37.
ProvenanceHarold B. Weinstein, purchased from the artist at his studio in New York on May 4, 1959. [1]
1979
James Graham & Sons, New York, NY [2]
From 1979
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC, purchased from James Graham & Sons, New York, with funds from Barbara B. Millhouse on December 22, 1979. [3]
Notes:
[1] Letter, November 27, 1979, copy object file.
[2] Invoices, object file.
[3] See note 2.
Exhibition History2008-2009
Figures in Bronze: Sculpture at Reynolda
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (4/14/2009-8/30/2009)
Published ReferencesReynolda House Museum of American Art, Reynolda: Her Muses, Her Stories , with contributions by Martha R. Severens and David Park Curry (Winston-Salem, N.C.: Reynolda House Museum of American Art affiliated with Wake Forest University, 2017). pg. 19-20, 20, 56, 166, 167, 174
DepartmentAmerican Art
Flight of Europa
Artist
Paul Manship
(1885 - 1966)
Date1925
Mediumcast bronze with red/white marble base
DimensionsOverall (with base): 23 x 29 5/8 x 8 1/2 in. (58.4 x 75.2 x 21.6 cm)
Base: 2 1/2 in. (6.4 cm)
Signed<unsigned>
Credit LineMuseum Purchase with funds provided by Barbara B. Millhouse
CopyrightCopyright Unknown
Object number1979.2.2
DescriptionWhile a great deal of Paul Manship’s oeuvre consists of large-scale commissions that complement modern buildings and public spaces, it also includes smaller sculptures that served as attractive gifts for friends and patrons and were also readily marketable. As a result of his three years at the American Academy in Rome, Manship became passionate about ancient mythology and archaic, rather than classical, sculpture. In a lecture he gave at the Academy, he admired the Ludovisi Throne and its depiction of Venus rising from the sea with clinging drapery as the “combination of lines and masses going to decorate the required surface with great directness and simplicity.” He continued with praise for the Charioteer of Delphi: “The bronze worker was an engraver who guided his tool with the precision of a goldsmith and with a taste for the appropriate in decoration which makes it a jewel of sculpture. Each eyelash is a separate hair of bronze, … All this perfection and delicacy of detail is but secondary to the simplicity and spontaneity—the aristocratic dignity of the type!” [1]Flight of Europa is a three-dimensional bronze sculpture with a green patina and a reddish undertone. A nude young woman with a drape across her lap sits cross-legged and facing backward on the back of a bull. A winged cupid is whispering in her left ear. The bull, with its highly developed musculature, spreads all four of his legs in a running position. Four diving dolphins support the bull. The bronze rests on a plinth of mottled red marble.
Drawn from Greek mythology, the tale of Europa and the bull is one of the many amorous exploits of the Olympian god Zeus. Noticing a lovely Phoenician princess, he disguised himself as a bull. At first timid, Europa gradually warms to the beast, places garlands in his horns, and then climbs on his back. The bull then dashes into the sea and takes her to the island of Crete, where he removes his disguise and seduces her. The story parodies the human-like foibles of the gods.
Manship made several versions of the story in marble and in bronze. The first bronze, Europa and the Bull, 1922, is more one sided and less dynamic. It features the maiden leaning against the recumbent bull, caressing his head and a horn with upraised arms. Overall it is more sensuous and massive than the more lyrical and energized second bronze, Flight of Europa, 1925, with the bull taking flight—as indicated by the title—with his short legs outspread and his powerful head bowed. His physique and position mirror those on the Vaphio Cups, gold repoussé vessels from the Minoan era of Crete. Europa sits erectly, apparently unperturbed by her fate, which Cupid may be explaining to her. Like many of Manship’s smaller sculptures, Flight of Europa involves a familiar narrative focusing on the interaction of humans and animals. Manship made twenty casts of both versions and several carved replicas of each. Both the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Brookgreen Gardens in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, own gilded examples of Flight of Europa.
The composition of Flight of Europa is delicately balanced, from the fine detail of hair to the broader treatment of flesh and muscles. Her erect posture serves as a counterpoint to the horizontal thrust of the bull. Movement is implied by the heavy forequarters of the bull and his tenuous position on four diving dolphins. The overall graceful lines and the sense of streamlined elegance mirror the emergent Art Deco style as exemplified by such structures as New York’s Chrysler Building. While the expression on the bull’s face is one of glee, hers is more restrained; together they evoke Manship’s “simplicity and spontaneity—the aristocratic dignity of the type!”
Notes:
[1] Manship, “The Decorative Value of Greek Sculpture” (lecture, American Academy in Rome, May 15, 1912), quoted in John Manship, Paul Manship (New York: Abbeville Press, 1989), 37.
ProvenanceHarold B. Weinstein, purchased from the artist at his studio in New York on May 4, 1959. [1]
1979
James Graham & Sons, New York, NY [2]
From 1979
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC, purchased from James Graham & Sons, New York, with funds from Barbara B. Millhouse on December 22, 1979. [3]
Notes:
[1] Letter, November 27, 1979, copy object file.
[2] Invoices, object file.
[3] See note 2.
Exhibition History2008-2009
Figures in Bronze: Sculpture at Reynolda
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (4/14/2009-8/30/2009)
Published ReferencesReynolda House Museum of American Art, Reynolda: Her Muses, Her Stories , with contributions by Martha R. Severens and David Park Curry (Winston-Salem, N.C.: Reynolda House Museum of American Art affiliated with Wake Forest University, 2017). pg. 19-20, 20, 56, 166, 167, 174
Status
On viewCollections
circa 1935