Name/Title
Bust of Louis Bromfield, Mary Lightfoot TarletonContext
Mary Lightfoot Tarleton was born in 1904 in Great Neck, Long Island, New York. In 1933, she won a Guggenheim Fellowship to study in Paris for 12 months beginning June 20, 1933. Working in bronze and stone, she specialized in female forms. In 1938, she married Bernard Knollenberg, Librarian at Yale’s Sterling Memorial Library. He died in 1973. Mary Tarleton Knollenberg later died in 1993 at her home in Chester, Connecticut.
The Bromfield bust was most likely done sometime during Tarleton’s 1933/34 stay in France.
In addition to the name Tarleton etched into the back of the lower neck of the Bromfield bust, there is also the following engraved into the work: CIRE D VALSUANI PERDUE. That imprint is for the Valsuani Foundry in France. CIRE PERDUE refers to the lost wax casting technique used to produce the bust.
In 1899, Italian-born Claude Valsuani started a foundry in Chatillon, France. He specialized in casting small works by various artists. He moved the foundry to Paris in 1905. A list of artists whose work was cast by Valsuani includes Degas, Rodin, Renoir, Gauguin, Picasso, Modigliani, Matisse, and Giacometti. Claude Valsuani died in 1923. His son, Marcele, took over the foundry operation until the 1970s. In 1981, artist Leonardo Benatov bought the foundry, renamed it Airaindor-Valsuan and relocated it to Chevreuse on the outskirts of Paris, where it still operates today.
- Research and text by Thomas Bachelder of the Malabar Farm FoundationLocation
Building
The Big HouseOhio State Park
Malabar Farm State Park
