Robert P. Taylor's : Fountain: Reflections of 3 Dancing Maidens

Why one sculpture?
Why one maid at a time?

Why Fountain deals with only one sculpture

Why is this site's sole subject a single sculpture, Walter Schott's Three Dancing Maidens, when related webberies (see Related Taylor websites below) have twenty or more subjects as the focus of their images? There are a number of reasons, and without going into great detail, summarizing them may help the visitor better appreciate Fountain. First, so limiting the site presented the opportunity to explore whether a website could be stronger by being focused more narrowly and limited to a smaller, more concentrated core. Second, the particular sculpture featured is not a typical statue, but in some ways three. Third, each individual maiden is very expressively rendered by Schott, both facially and bodily, and each merits careful drawing from several different perspectives to capture this expressiveness. Fourth, Schott's handling of the drapery in bronze is very beautiful and also merits careful drawing, almost apart from the body it swaths.

Why Fountain presents primarily single maiden images and not the whole trio

Since this work is a bronze snapshot of three young women, hands linked, joyously dancing about a central geyser of water, why are the drawings upon which the site is based almost exclusively of one maiden at a time and not the trio together? The reason was largely schedule constraints on the artist. The fountain is installed about 3/4 mile from my office, so reaching it requires 15 to 20 minutes, as does returning. Over the weeks during which I could spend spare time drawing the sculpture, I could not be sure of having any undivided 2 to 3 hour time blocks free for drawing, yet I knew each drawing of the complete trio could well require at least that much time at the fountain as well as 30 to 45 minutes travel time. On the other hand, over that same period, I could easily, at various times, on various days, find blocks of an hour and a half, blocks sufficient for both traveling and doing a drawing, so long as the subject of the drawing was limited to just one the three maidens. I reckoned thus to build up a set of three or more drawings of each individually, and provide a sense of the overall sculpture that way. Finally, the idea of forming composite trios from individual drawings hovered invitingly in my mind until I tried it (see Composite Trio below) and was disabused of that idea by the result I got.

Composite Trio    Index to All Exhibits    History of this sculpture

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