Faun

Alice Morgan Wright created Faun to decorate a country garden. She cast it in 1915 at the height of the boom in garden sculpture, when middle-class families began to move out of the city to second homes in the country. New homeowners wanted their plots to resemble European villas, so they created gardens filled with miniature fountains and small sculptures. They often decorated their gardens with fauns, which represented the dual nature of country gardens as both rural and urban. The faun is a mythical creature with the features of men and goats. Here, its legs appear to emerge from the rock as if he has sprung straight from nature, but he holds a flute symbolizing the power of music and culture to tame wild creatures, as humans domesticate the natural landscape.