Girl Drinking from Shell
This small statue was modelled by the sculptor Edward McCartan in 1915. The first bronze cast from the model was offered to George Gough Booth in 1916 by David Bendann, the proprietor of a Baltimore-based art gallery who frequently corresponded with Booth about new or proposed works by the painters and sculptors he represented. George Booth had a stated preference for the first casts of sculptures, when they were available. McCartan cast this piece at the Roman Bronze Works in New York, a foundry employed by several other artists whose work is represented in Cranbrook House, including Mario Korbel and Paul Manship. Since its purchase, this piece has been displayed both within the house, as pure sculpture, and employed in the greenhouse as a fountain.
McCartan was an American sculptor, trained at the Pratt Institute of New York, the American Academy of Rome, and in the studio of Jean Antoine Injalbert in Paris. His decorative, idealized figures earned him both popular and critical acclaim. Though he was not especially interested in garden sculpture as a genre, he enjoyed considerable success in that area. Life-size versions of "Girl Drinking from Shell" are now on display at the Reading Public Museum in Pennsylvania and the Hermitage Museum in Norfolk, Virginia, while other works by McCartan are held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery in Washington, D. C.
Mariam Hale
2023-2025 Collections Fellow
Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
January 2024
Diameter (at base): 7 1/2 in (19.1 cm)
ProvenanceGeorge Gough Booth and Ellen Scripps Booth (1918-1927)
Cranbrook Foundation (1927-1973)
Cranbrook Educational Community (1973-present)
Credit LineCranbrook Center for Collections and Research
Cultural Properties Collection, Founders Collection
Bequest of George Gough Booth and Ellen Scripps Booth through the Cranbrook Foundation
Medium | MaterialsBronze (first cast)
SignedE. McCartan
GenreObject TypeStatues
Select Exhibition HistoryThe Gilded Age to the Great War: America at the Turn of the Century
Lorenzo Cultural Center at Macomb Community College, February-May 2013.
Select Bibliography and Archival Citation(s)Appraisal by Stalker & Boos (1975). Series II: Appraisals and Inventories. George Gough and Ellen Warren Scripps Booth Financial Records (1981-02). Cranbrook Archives, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research, Bloomfield Hills, MI.
Correspondence with David Bendann. box 13, folder 18. George Gough and Ellen Warren Scripps Booth Financial Records (1981-02). Cranbrook Archives, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research, Bloomfield Hills, MI.
