A bust by Ottilie Maclaren Wallace acquired by Denver

14/3/24 - Acquisition - Denver, Denver Art Museum - A bust of the Scottish sculptor Ottilie Maclaren Wallace (ill. 1 to 3) is about to join the European collections of the Denver Art Museum. Acquired from the Drylewicz Gallery in Paris, it adds to the collection of nineteenth and early twentieth century sculptures a work by a pupil and disciple of Auguste Rodin, whose highly comparable plaster bust, The Weeping Woman, has been preserved (ill. 4). It is also a new addition to the range of works by women artists regularly added to the museum’s collection, and for the same period joins paintings and sheets by Berthe Morisot, Eva Gonzalez and Mary Cassatt, a second pastel of which was recently donated (ill. 5).

1. Ottilie Maclaren Wallace (1875-1947)
Man’s Bust, 1909
Patinated plaster - 35 x 31 x 23 cm
Denver, Denver Art Museum
Photo: Galerie Drylewicz

See the image in its page

As stated in the gallery’s notice [1], after training in drawing and sculpture in Edinburgh - in the studio of the sculptor James Pittendrigh MacGillivray - Ottilie Maclaren Wallace continued her artistic education in Paris from October 1897. At the age of twenty-two, she was taught by Jean-Antoine Injalbert and Denys Puech at the Académie Colarossi, then almost became a pupil of Camille Claudel before joining Auguste Rodin’s studio from May 1899 to July 1901, when she left Paris for good. On the subject of these five years in Paris, which are particularly well documented by the correspondence between the sculptor and her fiancé, the composer William Wallace, who remained in Great Britain - correspondence kept at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh -, we refer you to the work of Eva Belgherbi [2].

2. Ottilie Maclaren Wallace (1875-1947)
Man’s Bust, 1909
Patinated plaster - 35 x 31 x 23 cm
Denver, Denver Art Museum
Photo : Galerie Drylewicz

See the image in its page

3. Ottilie Maclaren Wallace (1875-1947)
Man’s Bust, 1909