Horus as a Hawk
- 103
A mythical king of early Egypt, Horus became the patron of pharaohs and supporter of monarchy. Some kings were seen as earthly manifestations of Horus.
The statue probably stood in a temple as a pious gift to the god. The artist has chosen not to render the fine details of the hawk's plumage, thus leaving broad sweeping planes, the very image of power.
With Jacob Hirsch, New York, by 1934 [1];
Purchased from Hirsch by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1934.
NOTES:
[1] Jacob Hirsch, PhD. (1874–1955) was born in Munich,
studied at Deutsches Archäologisches Institut in Rome, and then founded a
dealership in Munich in 1897. He moved to Lucerne in 1919 and founded Ars
Classica in 1922. In 1931, he opened Jacob Hirsch Antiquities in New York. At
some point, he also had a gallery in Paris. He handled coins and antiquities
but also had his own collection. See Hadrien Rambach, “A List of coin dealers
in nineteenth-century Germany,” in A Collection in Context. Kommentierte Edition der Briefe und
Dokumente Sammlung Dr. Karl von Schäffer, ed. Henner Hardt and Stefan Krmnicek
(Tübingen, Germany: Tübingen University Press, 2017), 69–70, hal-04345662. See also “Dr. Jacob
Hirsch, 81, An Authority on Art,” New York Times, July 5, 1955, 29.
The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, The William Rockhill Nelson Collection, 2nd ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1941), 15, fig. 5.
The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, The William Rockhill Nelson Collection, 3rd ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1949), 16.
Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 114.
Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 10, fig. 23.
