Goat Herder’s Wife
George Biddle (1885-1973), Goat Herder’s Wife, 1928, lithograph, signed in pencil lower right and titled and numbered (64/100) in pencil lower left margin [with the inscription “Biddle/1928” in the plate lower right] Reference: Pennigar 82, Trotter 48. Printed by George C. Miller. From the edition of 100. In excellent condition, on Rives cream wove paper, with full margins (tiny nick upper right edge); 9 1/2 x 13, the sheet 16 x 18 1/2 inches. Archival mounting (unattached mylar hinging between acid free boards, glassine cover).
A fine clear impression, in pristine condition.
After Groton, Harvard College and Harvard Law (and several breakdowns) Biddle decided that a conventional career in law was not for him; he decided on art, went to Paris, worked with Mary Cassatt and familiarized himself with modernist currents in art (as well as more traditional European art).
After serving in WWI, and the dissolution of his marriage, he became interested in working outside of the European tradition (although his travels continued to include Europe, and he spent a period working under the influence of Jules Pascin in Paris in the mid-20’s). Goat Herder’s Wife reflects the time he spent with Pascin, expecially in terms of the modernist flatness and freedom of the composition. Biddle reached a an aesthetic high point in this and several other prints he did of Mexico and Haiti in the late ’20’s; later his work was caught up in the social realism of the ’30’s.