Toy Venus

John Clements Gregory was an American sculptor, born in England, trained at the Art Students League in New York and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He was awarded a scholarship to study at the American Academy in Rome in 1912. George Booth purchased this work from a New York dealer in 1926.

Toy Venus shows the goddess kneeling on the back of a porpoise, its tail fin grasped in her right hand. Venus (Aphrodite to the Greeks) was born out of the sea; some classical depictions of her and her son Cupid show them accompanied by dolphins. The motif was taken up by Renaissance sculptors, whose highly stylized dolphins, with sinuous tails and stubby snouts, closely resemble fish or porpoises. Porpoises, unlike dolphins, are not native to the Mediterranean, but do frequent the Atlantic waters along the eastern coast of the United States, perhaps explaining Gregory’s choice of a porpoise as a companion for his Venus.

The torsion of the figure’s pose flattens the figure between two vertical planes, giving a relief-like quality to this three-dimensional work. Several casts of this small bronze were made, as well as a three-quarter life-size version in marble, produced in 1922 for the Long Island estate of Emmeline and Egerton Winthrop.

Mariam Hale
2023-2025 Collections Fellow
Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
March 2024