Today marks the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. Adolph Weinman's allegorical figure, Descending Night, sets the mood for the longest night of the year.
"Bringing with Her the Stars"
Today marks the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. Adolph Weinman's allegorical figure, Descending Night, sets the mood for the longest night of the year.
The figure's folded wings and her drooping head suggesting fatigue connote the closing of the day.
This version of Descending Night is the model for a much larger figure that surmounted the column in the Fountain of the Setting Sun, located in the Court of the Universe at the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco.
A critic at the time of the exposition described this work and the relief figures decorating the drum of the column as representing "Descending Night bringing with her the Stars, the Moon-goddess, Dreams, and similar beautiful things."
Source: National Museum of American Art (CD-ROM) (New York and Washington D.C.: MacMillan Digital in cooperation with the National Museum of American Art, 1996).
Pictured: Adolph A. Weinman, 1870 Germany–1952 USA, Descending Night, modeled about 1915, bronze, 56 1/2 x 46 1/4 x 24 1/4 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Adolph A. Weinman.