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Bell (Palanchian), Enid (1904-1994)
Nightclub (Last Dance)
c. 1945
Carved redwood on a painted wood base, 15 x 8 x 5 inches (including base). Inscribed "ENID BELL"
Exhibitions:
Likely the sculpture exhibited as "Night Club" in a solo exhibition at The Newark School of Fine and Industrial Art, January 22 - February 2 (year unrecorded); American Stories: The Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall Collection, Schoelkopf Gallery, New York, NY, January 17 - February 28, 2025, no. 34.
Reproduced:
American Stories: The Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall Collection (exhibition catalogue, Schoelkopf Gallery, New York, NY, 2025), p. 80.
References:
Enid Bell Palanchian website, http://www.enidbell.com.
Provenance:
Estate of the artist; with Conner Rosenkranz, New York, NY, 1994; The Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall Collection, Los Angeles, CA; acquired from the foregoing through Schoelkopf Gallery, New York, NY, January, 2025.
Born of Scottish parents in London in 1904, Enid Bell emigrated to America at the age of seventeen after two years of study at the Glasgow School of Art, London’s St. John’s Wood School of Art and privately with the renowned Scottish sculptor Sir William Reid Dick (1878-1961). Soon after her arrival, she enrolled at the Art Students League in New York City where she would meet Armenian-born painter Missak Palanchian (1898-1989) whom she would marry in 1932. Bell’s career as a sculptor progressed rapidly, with one-woman exhibitions at major New York City galleries in 1929 (Ferargil) and 1934 (Arden).
Although highly skilled in a variety of media, Bell was at her best as a wood carver. Her mostly figurative works were exhibited extensively, including an entry which earned her gold medal recognition at the Paris International Exposition in 1937. Bell spent most of her career in New Jersey, serving as Sculpture Supervisor for the New Jersey Arts & Crafts Project of the WPA in 1940 and 1941. In 1944, she commenced a quarter-century teaching career as head of the sculpture department at the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Art. Bell continued to sculpt and exhibit regularly during this period, both independently and in joint exhibitions with her husband.
Bell’s sculpture is both technically proficient and assured. “All of Miss Bell’s work shows cultivated feeling for composition, grace of line and assured command of her materials,” wrote Carlyle Burrows of the New York Herald Tribune in a review of her 1934 Arden exhibition.* While each of these characteristics are evident in Nightclub (Last Dance), the work demonstrates Bell’s remarkable ability to imbue her figures with movement and feeling. Bell's flowing lines evoke the natural rhythms of dancing couples, a motif she would explore repeatedly across multiple sculptures and materials. The subtle posture of Bell’s female figure is particularly expressive, simultaneously conveying both exhaustion and affection as the couple shares a final dance at the end of a romantic evening.
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* Quoted at http://www.enidbell.com/background.htm. Precise date and page number not provided.