The Silich Collection of Historical and Art Medals (Part II)

FRANCE, Isadore Duncan: Ode à la Pologne [Isadore Duncan: Ode to Poland], c. 1912, a uniface cast bronze plaque by F.-M. Charpentier-Mio, Isadore Duncan in four poses; fully robed with back to the viewer, seated discarding robe, seated with arms raised, robe at left, and standing facing in negligé, right arm raised, signed, stamped 3 in upper right corner, back stamped p55, 230 x 119mm, 560.10g. Extremely fine and attractively patinated, with loop for suspension; a stunning plaque of extreme rarity £800-£1,000

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Silich Collection of Historical and Art Medals.

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Bt Yates June 2017.

Angela Isadore Duncan (1877-1927), b San Francisco, dancer and choreographer, pioneer of modern contemporary dance, moved to New York in 1896, then London and, by 1900, was in Paris; in 1904 she moved to Berlin, but was back in Paris by 1912 where she established a dance school that had to close at the outbreak of the Great War. By the close of 1914 she was back in New York, but opened a dance school in Moscow in 1921 before spending what were to be her last years in France. In 1924 she composed a dance routine, Varshavianka, to the tune of Warszawianka, a Polish socialist revolutionary song written in the early 1880s but which became the anthem of worker protests during the revolution in Poland, when 30 workers were shot during the May Day demonstrations in Warsaw in 1905