Angels Among Us
I have a favorite statue. It is titled “Casting Bread upon the Waters” or informally “Angel of the Waters.” It depicts an angel atop a carved plinth, almost striding. A basket sits in the crook of one arm while the other is outstretched in the act of scattering the basket’s contents. The rest of the piece consists of a granite fountain base with two cornucopias, stuffed with fruit, affixed to each side. Water streams from their spouts, pooling into the basin. She resides in a quiet spot in the far northwest corner of Boston’s Public Garden, almost overlooked amidst the trees and walking paths that wind around the lagoon in the middle of the garden. I hardly ever miss a chance to pay her a visit.
The statue was commissioned in 1924 in memory of George Robert White, a prominent Bostonian and philanthropist. White amassed his fortune as the head of the Potter Drug and Chemical Company, known for its best-selling anti-bacterial soap, Cuticura. I was relieved to read that because I totally expected to find out that Potter Drug sold diet pills laced with cocaine and asbestos to modern housewives and child laborers. When he died in 1922 he left the city of Boston an enormous trust to the tune of $5 million dollars. Thankfully White attached a bunch of stipulations for the trust and its funds. There were appointed trustees who had to submit detailed reports. The committee was required to deliberate for at least 3 months before signing off on any project. And the funds were specifically earmarked for projects and improvements that “created public beauty” and could not be used toward the kinds of things most of the pencil-pushing-political-bureaucrats on the Hill would have voted for such as adding toll booths in the harbor or installing more cigarette stands in maternity wards (this was 1922 after all). You think the man staving off America’s germs one bar of soap at a time was a dum-dum? Think again.
The “Angel of the Waters” is one of several memorials created with White’s greens. The sculptor was New Hampshire-born artist Daniel Chester French. You might know French from his very minor contribution called the statue of Abraham Lincoln that sits in the Lincoln Memorial. What a hack, right? Angels were kind of French’s jam-sculpturally speaking. They were one of his favorite subjects for memorials and it shows.
Even a passing glance is enough to slow you down long enough to take in this statue and agree that she is something special. Look at the way her gown rustles, folds, and seems to move along with her confident stride. How does one get bronze to do that? Asking for 80 million creatively-challenged humans. Take a second to marvel at the bones in her ankles—HER ANKLES! Then let your gaze travel up to that jawline, which makes you want to cup her face in her hand, but also not because that would be rude and invasive and then you realize you are gaming this scenario in front of an inanimate object and not, like, you know, a real person. Holy. Smokes. That is three-time Olympic gold medal winning level of skill and artistry and gift. And I haven’t even begun to gush over the angel’s wings, one of her most exquisite features. See how they grace her back with elegance and power, both of which are rendered in the heft of each layered feather, in the brazen arch of her pinions. Why walk at all when you have such a mighty built-in ticket to ride as she does?
I can’t single out any one reason for my repeat trips to take in this statue. It’s a mystery even to me, and that’s okay. Why do we re-read books or listen to the same album over and over again? We need whatever those ineffable things are emanating from the art that speaks to us, the hope or awe or rage or grace folded into the bronze with the devotion of a tailor laboring on behalf of the divine.
Here are a few more captures I’ve taken over the last *gulp* decade!
Stunning! I love her too. So statuesque and ethereal at the same time! XO
The detail is exquisite! Wonderful share, thanks for this.