Head of Sen-useret III
- 103
Heads of State and Some Friends, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, January 4–February 6, 1983, no. 9.
Sésostris III, pharaon de legend, Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille, France, September 30, 2014–February 15, 2015, no. 4.
Ancient Egypt Transformed: The Middle Kingdom, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, October 12, 2015–January 24, 2016, no. 22, as Head of a Colossal Statue of Senwosret III.
Sen-useret III is shown wearing the royal nemes, a striped headcloth. The uraeus, the rearing cobra over his forehead, protected him against evil forces.
This exceptional sculpture is in many respects—but not all—realistic. It is not completely how a mortal looks. The face is too smooth, lacking all the wrinkles of age; the head is over life-size. The sculpture is thus monumental, suggesting the pharaoh's omnipotence. The weariness apparent in his face might reflect the strain derived from ruling all Egypt, from being the sole shepherd of so large a flock.
With Paul and Marguerite Mallon, New York, by 1962 [1];
Purchased from Paul and Marguerite Mallon by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1962.
NOTES:
[1] Paul Mallon (1884–1975) and his second wife Mélanie Louise Catherine (née Nadaud, 1900–1977) were dealers, who specialized in Asian, Ancient (especially Egyptian), and Byzantine art. See biography on Paul Mallon at Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC, https://www.doaks.org/resources/bliss-tyler-correspondence/annotations/paul-mallon. Mélanie Mallon seems to have also gone by the name Marguerite, as shown on her tombstone in Cimetière de Chahaignes, although her travel papers and birth certificate list her name as Mélanie Louise. She was also called Margot; see letter from Royall Tyler to Mildred Barnes Bliss, February 5, 1929, Bliss-Tyler Correspondence, Dumarton Oaks, Washington, DC, https://www.doaks.org/resources/bliss-tyler-correspondence/letters/05feb1929.
Ross Taggart, “A Quartzite Head of Sesostris III,” Bulletin (The Nelson Gallery and Atkins Museum) 4, no. 2 (1962): 8–15.
Emma Hall, “Some Ancient Egyptian Sculpture in American Museums,” Apollo 88 (July 1968): 15–16.
John Cooney, “Art of the Ancient World,” Apollo 96 (December 1972): 476, (repro.).
Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 26.
Bernard Bothmer, “Revealing Man’s Fate in Man’s Face,” Art News 79, no. 6 (1980): 124.
Roger Ward, Heads of State and Some Friends, exh. cat. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1983), 1.
Ellen R. Goheen, The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1988), 21.
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), 24, 112.
Rita Freed, “Beauty and Perfection: Pharaonic Art,” Egypt: The World of the Pharaohs, ed. Regine Schulz and Matthias Seidel (Cologne: Könemann, 1998), 336, (repro.).
古代地中海世界の美術 / Art of the Ancient Mediterranean World, exh. cat. (Nagoya: Nagoya/Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 1999), 21.
Robert Cohon and Elly-Ann Miles, eds., The University of Missouri-Kansas City Guide to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Collection of Ancient Egyptian Art (Kansas City, MO: Trustees of the Nelson Gallery Foundation, 1999), 3.
Edna Russmann, “Aspects of Egyptian Art,” in Eternal Egypt: Masterworks of Egyptian Art from the British Museum, ed. Edna Russmann, exh. cat. (London: British Museum Press, 2001), 35–36, (repro.).
Bernard Bothmer, “Revealing Man’s Fate in Man’s Face,” in Egyptian Art: Selected Writings of Bernard V. Bothmer, ed. Madeleine Cody, Paul Stanwick, and Marsh Hill (1980; repr. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 329, 331, (repro.).
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), 7, (repro.), as Head of Sesostris III.
Fleur Morfoisse and Guillemette Andreu-Lanoe, eds., Sésostris III, pharaon de legend, exh. cat. (Lille: Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille, 2014), 38, 43–45, 274, (repro.).
Julian Zugazagoitia and Laura Spencer, Director's Highlights: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Celebrating 90 Years, ed. Kaitlyn Bunch (The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), 84, (repro.).
C. D. Dickerson III and Andrew Sears, Broken: The Power of the Fragment in Sculpture, exh. cat. (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art & University of Chicago, forthcoming 2026).
C. D.
