Girl Drinking from Shell

This is one of two known life-size castings of McCartan’s “Drinking Girl.” The other example is located at the Hermitage Museum and Gardens in Norfolk, Virginia. McCartan’s superb command of classical contrapposto, refined line, and his use of ornamental details were ideally suited to the contemporary taste for garden sculpture in the first decades of the twentieth century, and he made a specialty of this genre, focusing on woodland or mythological themes.