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Lot Essay
'I will never forget the day we were out to Brockton, how happy I was, I thought the world was mine. When both of us were walking through the woods together [arm in arm] and the beautiful birds that were singing sweet melodies… What Paradise it was! Tell me Mr. Day, do you not remember the happy time we had there?'—Nicola Giancola
Among the leading Pictorialist photographers of his generation and the founder of the New School of American Photography, Boston-based photographer Fred Holland Day’s oeuvre is most recognized for its adulation of male youth and beauty, as seen in the current lot. Taken in 1907, the image presents Nicola Giancola, a protagonist in many of Day’s photographs from the first decade of the last century. Depicted with a laurel wreath and lyre, Giancola is a personified Orpheus, a hauntingly beautiful vision of eternal, heroic youth. This image is one of a dedicated series of Greek mythology-inspired images that Day would produce between 1896 and 1910. Beautifully staged, cropped and printed, the series became a vessel for Day to resurrect imagined icons while exploring his sexuality, a subject he closely guarded. In her book, F. Holland Day, Pam Roberts alludes that Giancola, in fact, may have been Day’s lover, noting that there is 'far stronger homoerotic element in almost all the photographs for which Giancola is the model than in Day’s other male nudes.' (Roberts, et al., p. 26).
By the time the image was taken, Day was well known in artistic milieus for his adulation of the Classics, starting with his formation of the Visionists, a salon-style group of likeminded bohemian individuals. Among the artists, writers and philosophers who formed the group was Louise Imogen Guiney, a poet, journalist and essayist whose lyrical work was inspired by 17th-century Old English poetry. Roberts notes that 'there were enough similarities and contradictions in their characters and interests to keep them mutually enthralled, steadfastly supportive, and infinitely tolerant of each other’s foibles for over thirty years…She encouraged him in his photography and his charitable work, both of which began to gain momentum around [the late 1880s]' (Roberts, et al, F. Holland Day, p. 13). In 1893, six years following their initial encounter, Guiney posed as St. Barbara for Holland Day, a laurel wreath crowning her head. The two remained close, and indeed, in an effort to financially assist his poet friend, Holland Day purchased the beach estate that Guiney owned with her mother, which he later used to host fellow photographers.
The lifelong friendship between the two Classically-minded aesthetes is also preserved through correspondence, now at The Library of Congress. As the largest holder of photographs by F. Holland Day in the United States, The Library of Congress holds two other prints of ‘The Last Chord and Then No More’ (under the title ‘Nude youth with laurel wreath any lyre, seated on rock’), both listed as from the collection of Louise Imogen Guiney. In all likelihood, the print offered in the current lot was also from the collection of Guiney. The current lot is a superb example in platinum of a likely lover, presumably gifted to a beloved friend by the artist. This is the first time this image, in any format, has come up for auction.
Among the leading Pictorialist photographers of his generation and the founder of the New School of American Photography, Boston-based photographer Fred Holland Day’s oeuvre is most recognized for its adulation of male youth and beauty, as seen in the current lot. Taken in 1907, the image presents Nicola Giancola, a protagonist in many of Day’s photographs from the first decade of the last century. Depicted with a laurel wreath and lyre, Giancola is a personified Orpheus, a hauntingly beautiful vision of eternal, heroic youth. This image is one of a dedicated series of Greek mythology-inspired images that Day would produce between 1896 and 1910. Beautifully staged, cropped and printed, the series became a vessel for Day to resurrect imagined icons while exploring his sexuality, a subject he closely guarded. In her book, F. Holland Day, Pam Roberts alludes that Giancola, in fact, may have been Day’s lover, noting that there is 'far stronger homoerotic element in almost all the photographs for which Giancola is the model than in Day’s other male nudes.' (Roberts, et al., p. 26).
By the time the image was taken, Day was well known in artistic milieus for his adulation of the Classics, starting with his formation of the Visionists, a salon-style group of likeminded bohemian individuals. Among the artists, writers and philosophers who formed the group was Louise Imogen Guiney, a poet, journalist and essayist whose lyrical work was inspired by 17th-century Old English poetry. Roberts notes that 'there were enough similarities and contradictions in their characters and interests to keep them mutually enthralled, steadfastly supportive, and infinitely tolerant of each other’s foibles for over thirty years…She encouraged him in his photography and his charitable work, both of which began to gain momentum around [the late 1880s]' (Roberts, et al, F. Holland Day, p. 13). In 1893, six years following their initial encounter, Guiney posed as St. Barbara for Holland Day, a laurel wreath crowning her head. The two remained close, and indeed, in an effort to financially assist his poet friend, Holland Day purchased the beach estate that Guiney owned with her mother, which he later used to host fellow photographers.
The lifelong friendship between the two Classically-minded aesthetes is also preserved through correspondence, now at The Library of Congress. As the largest holder of photographs by F. Holland Day in the United States, The Library of Congress holds two other prints of ‘The Last Chord and Then No More’ (under the title ‘Nude youth with laurel wreath any lyre, seated on rock’), both listed as from the collection of Louise Imogen Guiney. In all likelihood, the print offered in the current lot was also from the collection of Guiney. The current lot is a superb example in platinum of a likely lover, presumably gifted to a beloved friend by the artist. This is the first time this image, in any format, has come up for auction.