Portrait of Mrs Grant

In 1987, copy 1/7 was located again, which is dated 1913, which substantially modifies the date that had been attributed to this sculpture, modeled by Gargallo, as a mask, from the portrait of the same lady who, in white marble and a round shape, he had made it in 1910. In fact, in the catalog of the exhibition Jeunesse des maîtres de la sculpture du XXe siècle, held in 1959 at the Musée Rodin, this mask is dated 1913. The existence of specimens dated 1923, this is probably because they were cast in that year and the original date was not respected, attributing it to that of the moment.

In this work, a convex mask cast in bronze, Gargallo rehearses (and obtains extraordinarily effective and singular results), for the first and only time in sculptures modeled for casting, the application of a resource as characteristic and risky as the total emptying of the eyes and mouth. , whose use he had put into practice a couple of years before in sheet metal masks such as Man's Mask, 1910-11, or Young Man with Curly Hair, 1911, and which he would later continue to use in certain pieces of the same type, such as Street Singer, 1915, or Gypsy Mask, 1920-21. Curiously or symptomatically, when he made the only convex mask of his second copper period, he would also tear with expressive delicacy the right eye of Pierrot's melancholic Little Mask, 1927.