Centaur and Dryad ranks as one of the major critical successes of Manship's early career. He modeled the group in Rome, commencing studies as early as 1909, and completed its elaborate pedestal in New York. The subject represented, a lecherous centaur attempting to embrace a protesting wood nymph, can be found in art of the ancient world. The rectangular pedestal of exquisite workmanship complements the theme of the group above it, the consumption of wine that releases the passions of the centaur, a mythological creature that is half-man and half-horse. There are low-relief scenes of satyrs chasing maenads, with two griffins on either narrow end. Around the bottom of the base is a decorative border of animals, birds, and dolphins.
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New York. Berlin Photographic Company. "Exhibition of Sculpture by Paul Manship," February 15–March 8, 1916, no. 11.
New York. National Arts Club. "Paul Manship Memorial Exhibition," May 10–24, 1966, unnumbered cat.
New York. Whitney Museum of American Art. "200 Years of American Sculpture," March 16–September 26, 1976, no. 155.
Athens. National Pinakothiki, Alexander Soutzos Museum. "Treasures from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: Memories and Revivals of the Classical Spirit," September 24–December 31, 1979, no. 113.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Art of Paul Manship," June 11–September 1, 1991, unnumbered cat. (fig. 15).
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Subjects and Symbols in American Sculpture: Selections from the Permanent Collection," April 11–August 20, 2000, no catalogue.
New York. National Academy of Design. "Side by Side: American Sculpture from the Collections of the National Academy of Design and The Metropolitan Museum of Art," February 8–April 20, 2003.
Albany. New York State Museum. "Cast Images: American Bronze Sculpture from The Metropolitan Museum of Art," October 20, 2007–February 24, 2008, not in brochure.
Martin Birnbaum. Exhibition of Sculpture by Paul Manship. Exh. cat., Berlin Photographic Company. New York, 1916, pp. 11, 13, no. 11.
A. E. Gallatin. "The Sculpture of Paul Manship." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 11 (October 1916), p. 218 n. 1, p. 220, ill. p. 221, calls it "Centaur and Nymph" and "Centaur and Dryad".
Paul Vitry. Paul Manship, sculpteur américain. Paris, 1927, p. 36, pls. 7, 8.
Albert TenEyck Gardner. American Sculpture: A Catalogue of the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1965, pp. 150–51, ill.
Lowery Stokes Sims. The Figure in 20th Century American Art: Selections from The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Exh. cat., Jacksonville Art Museum. New York, 1984, p. 16.
Harry Rand. Paul Manship. Exh. cat., National Museum of American Art. Washington, D. C., 1989, pp. 17, 29, 32, 47, 192 n. 8, p. 193 n. 23, fig. 15.
Susan Rather. Archaism, Modernism, and the Art of Paul Manship. Austin, 1993, pp. 76–85, 90–92, 106, 210 n. 3, fig. 41, dates it 1912–13.
Joan M. Marter inAmerican Sculpture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ed. Thayer Tolles. Vol. 2, A Catalogue of Works by Artists Born between 1865 and 1885. New York and New Haven, 2001, pp. 748–50, no. 375, ill.
Thayer Tolles. "Daniel Chester French, Paul Manship, and the 'John Pierpont Morgan Memorial' for the." Metropolitan Museum Journal 41 (2006), pp. 179–80, fig. 10.
Paul Manship (American, St. Paul, Minnesota 1885–1966 New York)
1927
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