PAUL HOWARD MANSHIP (1885-1966)

Created during the spring of Paul Manship's final year at the American Academy in Rome, Lyric Muse is one of a series of small Greek-inspired sculptures that "were all distinguished for strong design, carefully organized decorative patterns, and especially crisp and suave modeling...The three of them combined in the same work resulted in an art that was profoundly different from the naturalistic, freely modeled sculpture of the prevailing American style...Within a few years Manship's lead in imposing effective sculptural forms upon nature was being followed by many young American sculptors." (E. Murtha, Paul Manship, New York, 1957, p. 11)

According to Edwin Murtha, Lyric Muse was produced in an edition size of fifteen. Other examples of this work are in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts; the Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio; The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, Minnesota.