In stone, four life-sized figures, two male and two female, posed around and halfway emerging from, or captured by, an indistinct central volume.By the American sculptor Lorado Taft, 1860-1936. In the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.
The Neoclassicism of the sculptors Harriet Hosmer and Randolph Rogers was replaced in the second half of the 19th century by the more realistic naturalism of French-trained sculptors such as American sculptor Lorado Zadoc Taf (1860-1936). An instructor in modeling at the School of the Art Institute for 20 years, Taft created public monuments for Chicago that made the city a center for sculpture. The figures in this work are only partly freed from the marble, a technique that emphasizes the mass and outline of the stone.
Explaining The Solitude of the Soul, Taft wrote, “The thought is the eternally present fact that however closely we may be thrown together by circumstances . . . we are unknown to each other”.
