Title
The spirit of the sea
1933
Artist
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Details
- Date
- 1933
- Media category
- Sculpture
- Materials used
- plaster, wood
- Dimensions
- 39.5 x 41.5 x 23.5 cm
- Signature & date
Signed l.l. verso, incised "Barbara Tribe.". Not dated.
- Credit
- Bequest of Barbara Tribe 2015
- Location
- Not on display
- Accession number
- 221.2015
- Copyright
- © Barbara Tribe Foundation
- Artist information
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Barbara Tribe
Works in the collection
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About
In 'The spirit of the sea' 1933 Barbara Tribe has endowed a mythological subject with a modern sensibility. The marine theme was influenced by her upbringing in Sydney's eastern suburbs and was in tune with the classicised reimagining of beach life by Australian artists during the 1930s. Tribe has modelled a mermaid being devoured by a sea creature in 'The spirit of the sea'. Its overt eroticism, represented by the sexual symbolism of the serpent and its contortion of the female figure, is indicative of the vitalist traditions taught by Rayner Hoff with whom Tribe was a student of at East Sydney Technical College.' The spirit of the sea’ was first exhibited in the Society of Artists, Sydney, in 1934, where it and was reviewed favourably in the Sydney Mail.
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Exhibition history
Shown in 2 exhibitions
Society of Artists Annual Exhibition (1934), Education Department Gallery [Loftus Street], Sydney, 07 Sep 1934–05 Oct 1934
Alice to Penzance, Mall Galleries, London, 19 Jul 1991–29 Jul 1991
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Bibliography
Referenced in 5 publications
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Deborah Edwards, 'This vital flesh': the sculpture of Rayner Hoff and his school, 'The new renaissance: the practical apparatus', pg. 15-30, Sydney, 1999, 24, 25 (colour illus.), 109. bronze version
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Peter Lanigan-O'Keefe., Alice to Penzance : a retrospective exhibition of the work of Barbara Tribe, F.R.B.S. Australia's most important living sculptress and the Originals Outback collection of contemporary Aboriginal paintings, 'Barbara Tribe, F.R.B.S.', London, 1991, n.pag..
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Patricia McDonald, Barbara Tribe: sculptor, North Ryde, 2000, 15, 77 (colour illus.), 148, 156, 160. plate no. 2
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Society of Artists, Society of Artists Annual Exhibition (1934), Sydney, 1934, n.pag. (illus.). cat.no. 240; titled 'Spirit of the Sea (Decorative Figure)'; priced 10 gns
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'The man on the street', Sydney Mail, 'The Society of Arists', pg. 15, Sydney, 19 Sep 1934, 15.
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