James House Jr. sculpture from ’39 World’s Fair

The wooden sculpture was taller than me, and thicker. The wood was dark, heavy, rough to the touch. It stood in a corner just beyond a wide door that led to another room in the auction house.

As big and bold as it was, you couldn’t miss it. And I didn’t. A paper tag had been attached by wire around its leg, proclaiming that it had been exhibited at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. The sculpture of a nude female – she was a tough-looking woman – in a contorted pose was signed near the foot “James House Jr. 1935.”

Since it was a piece of art, I was naturally intrigued. That it had sat on the grounds of the fair was even more enticing. I had written about another artist who created a sculpture for the fair: Augusta Savage who made “The Harp” to celebrate African American contributions to music. It was made of plaster like many of the other works, and like them, was destroyed once the fair was over.

House, however, had used wood in this sculpture. The wood now had some splits and cracks, as the auction bid sheet noted, along with some missing pieces around the base. The auction sheet described it as a “Monumental Carved Wood Sculpture,” largely, I’m sure, because of its size. It stood at 7 feet 3 inches tall and 3 feet wide.

Who was this artist James House Jr., what was he trying to portray in this female sculpture and where did it stand at the fair? Did he give it a name?

I found that the artist’s name was James C. House Jr., but I could find nothing about the sculpture itself on the web. Sculptures were apparently commissioned by both the fair organizers and the various companies that had exhibits.

Some of the pieces I came across were Louis Slobodkin’s “Rail Joiner,” (an Abraham Lincoln common-man plaster sculpture that was removed and destroyed), Maurice Ascalon’s “The Scholar, the Laborer & the Toiler of the Soil,” Leo Friedlander’s “Four Freedoms,” Paul Manship’s “Time and Fates of Man,” among others.

House was born in Michigan in 1902, and studied at the University of Michigan and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He got his bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania, where he later taught for 45 years.

House spent his artistic career as a wood sculptor and caricaturist in Philadelphia for more than 50 years. He produced caricatures for such newspapers as the New York Post and Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. According to one bio that accompanied an exhibit of his works, he was the Bulletin’s main caricaturist in the 1940s and 1950s, drawing characters from shows and concerts to be published alongside articles or reviews.

The caricatures in that exhibit included such stars as Henry Fonda, Carol Channing and Mae West, and such shows as “Mister Roberts,” “Death of a Salesman” and “Peter Pan,” according to the site.

In House’s collection of papers at Syracuse University, he wrote in notes for an unpublished book of theater caricatures:

“. . . theater caricatures (were) done on opening night assignments for Phila Evening Bulletin. Drawings made by 2AM deadline on same night, caption written to make 11AM edition of paper. The toughest spot for production — because of time — I know of any caricaturist ever having.”

The Syracuse collection includes drawings, the unpublished manuscript, lectures, photos of his sculptures, articles about him and his original caricatures.

House’s works were exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, the Whitney Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art and the Detroit Institute of Art. He was commissioned to do sculptures for major museums, local churches and galleries, and private companies.

I found only one other sculpture by him on the web, an abstract that sold in 1991. I’d love to see some of his caricatures.

I wasn’t around when the female nude sold, but I found on the web that the starting bid was $750. By the time the bidding was done, the sculpture sold for $3,000.