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Chauncey Bradley Ives (American, 1810-1894)
Undine Rising from the Waters, modeled c. 1880/82
Marble, 50-5/8 x 12-3/4 x 15-3/4 inches
Gift of James H. Ricau and Museum Purchase

Chauncey Bradley Ives was born near New Haven, Connecticut, and worked for a time in Boston and New York. Yet his mature career unfolded in Italy, then the focal point for American sculptors working in the neoclassical style. (For Ives's early biography, see object 86.480) In Italy, Ives's portrait busts and winsome images of childhood were perennially popular, especially among wealthy Americans making the Grand Tour. But like so many of his artist countrymen, he felt that only high-minded, idealized works would bring him enduring fame. Thus, after 1844 he began a series of subjects drawn primarily from the Bible and classical myth. These, too, were warmly received by his American clientele, and Ives spent much of his later career overseeing replication of his most popular ideal marbles. They included the 1863 Pandora and his two versions of Undine. Ives conceived the first version, Undine Receiving Her Soul, in 1859 for the New York art collector Marshall O. Roberts. He revisited the theme in 1880-82, creating an altogether different composition entitled Undine, Rising from the Fountain. It is this version that is today in the Chrysler's collection.

The subject of Ives's Undine sculptures can be traced to medieval legends. According to these, undines were Mediterranean sea sprites, mortal, but without souls. To gain a soul and, with it, immortality, an undine had to take on human form and trick a man into marrying her. She could then leave the sea, but only as long as her mate remained true. If he were to discover her real identity and reject her, she would have to destroy him.

The dark tale of the undine's treacherous, ill-fated love was especially popular among Romantic and Victorian artists and writers. Ives probably encountered it in a well-known German romance of 1811, Friedrich de la Motte-Fouqué's Undine. Motte-Fouqué recounts how Undine, having been banished by her husband, Sir Huldebrand, emerges from an unstoppered fountain in the courtyard of his castle. "A pale and weeping woman, deeply veiled in white [and] wringing her hands distractedly, she slowly moved to the castle quarters" to confront her unfaithful husband. Finding Huldebrand in his bed chamber awaiting his new bride, Undine embraces him and drowns him with her tears.

Ives chose to depict the avenging sea sprite as she rises from the fountain and assumes human form. Tiny jets of water on the pedestal spring up at her feet. Her wet, clinging gown-a virtuoso example of late-nineteenth-century "see-through illusionism" (William Gerdts)-runs down her body like water. Indeed, the delicate carving and tactile rendering of the drapery folds and the thinness of the marble cloak she holds above her head make Undine one of the most skillfully crafted pieces in the Chrysler's large collection of American neoclassical sculptures (see objects 86.463, 86.522, 86.512-513). Ives's inspired melodrama is indicative of American Victorian taste. So, too, are the ample proportions of his sea sprite and the voyeuristic effect of her drapery, which does little to conceal her body. This second version of Undine proved immensely popular, prompting Ives to produce at least ten replicas of it.

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