Here's the press release for an interesting numismatically-related display at this summer's ANA show.
-Editor
A rare example of a reduced-size
early 20th-century New York City landmark statue, created by acclaimed sculptor
Augustus Saint-Gaudens, will be publicly displayed at the American Numismatic
Association 2023 Pittsburgh World's Fair of Money®.
Entitled Victory, the statue is reminiscent of the great artist's renowned
1907-1933 U.S. Double Eagle gold coins design. The same female model posed
for Saint-Gaudens for both of those projects.
Previously in a private collection for decades, the stunning statue was
purchased for $1,168,400 at a Sotheby's auction by Kevin Lipton of Kevin Lipton
Rare Coins in Beverly Hills, California this past April. He now will exhibit it for the
public to see at the ANA Pittsburgh convention, August 8-12.
The three-and-a-half-foot tall gilded bronze figure on a four-inch marble
base is a reduction of Saint-Gaudens' famous ten-and-half foot tall Victory statue
at the General William Tecumseh Sherman Monument in Grand Army Plaza
at the Southeast corner of New York's Central Park. It was dedicated in
1903, and only three reduction examples are privately owned, including this
one, said Lipton.
After Saint-Gaudens died in 1907, his widow Augusta Fisher Homer
Saint-Gaudens authorized the creation of eight reductions. In addition to the
three privately held, five today are in the collections of museums or institutions,
such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Carnegie Museum
of Art in Pittsburgh, or at national historic sites, including Arlington National
Cemetery in Virginia.
Sotheby's described the Victory statue as designed to emulate the
allegorical female figure of the Greek goddess Nike.
It took Saint-Gaudens 11 years from 1892 to 1903 to painstakingly
create the Sherman Monument and Victory statue which art critics have
described as an American masterpiece, explained Lipton.
Owning one of these specially-made, century-old Saint-Gaudens
statues has been on my bucket list since I was a teenager and saw one for
sale at an antiques show in New York in 1977. It was priced at $60,000 back
then, well beyond the budget of a 17-year-old aspiring coin dealer from New
Jersey, explained Lipton.
I first saw the full-size Central Park monument statue when I was a
child. Over the years, I've owned some of the most historic Saint-Gaudens
coins, including a 1907 Ultra-High Relief Double Eagle, but this statue
eluded me until recently. Now, it is time to share this masterpiece with the
public, he stated.
The model for Victory was Harriette Eugenia Anderson who later was
the artist's model for what are known today as America's most beautiful coins,
the Saint-Gaudens $20 denomination Double Eagles.
The face on the statue is virtually the same as on the gold coins, Lipton
noted.
The statue reduction that will be displayed at the ANA 2023 World's Fair of
Money convention was previously in the extensive art collection of Erving (1926-
2018) and Joyce (1927-2022) Wolf. Sotheby's described their Fifth Avenue
apartment in New York City as decorated with art that was a collection that
embodies the American spirit in such tremendous depth and breadth.
The Victory statue will be at booth #606 in Halls A and B of the David L.
Lawrence Convention Center, 1000 Fort Duquesne Blvd., Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, the site of the ANA 2023 World's Fair of Money.
For additional information about Kevin Lipton Rare Coins, call (310) 712-
8118. For additional information about the ANA convention, visit
www.WorldsFairofMoney.com.
Wayne Homren, Editor
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