“Head of A Young Woman” from the Nizhny Tagil Museum of Fine Arts was created by Maria Lvovna Dillon, one of the first female sculptors in Russia.
Like many other professions, in the 19thcentury, sculpture was an exclusively male occupation. This made Maria Dillon’s path to becoming an artist extremely difficult. However, being a woman was not the only obstacle for the talented sculptor: Maria Dillon came from the family of a Jewish tax farmer. However, being talented and passionate about art, the young girl used anything as a material for sculpture, even breadcrumbs, and for that, she was often scolded by her parents. As a natural result of her talent, later she entered the Imperial Academy of Arts. After graduating from the Academy, she was not only able to become a sculptor and do what she loved but also received the right to live outside the Pale of Settlement, which was forbidden for most Jews in the Russian Empire. Mina Dillon attended classes at the Academy as a non-matriculated student. Over a few years, she received several Grand and Small Silver Medals, and upon graduation — a Small Gold Medal and the title of a class artist of the second degree.
Throughout her fruitful career, the sculptor managed to develop her own artistic style. People fell in love with her graceful and charming portrayals of women. Her feminine academic style fit nicely into both luxurious salons and restrained Art Nouveau interiors. In her works, the thin and fancy lines of Art Nouveau followed the curves of the female body and the languid turns of a young woman’s head. Images of women and the delicate beauty of the female form, so popular during the Art Nouveau period, could be better understood and executed by a female sculptor. With her admiration for femininity, embodied in her exquisite statues, she won the hearts of the audience, including the imperial family.
In 1900, Maria Dillon created the famous “Lily” — a marble bust of a young woman which was purchased by the imperial family for the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoe Selo. Several years before that milestone event, the sculptor came up with an idea for an entire series of busts of lovely young women whom she compared to flowers. Although the idea was not fully implemented, the artist created several statues.
The idea of creating captivating images of flowers embodied by young women also manifested itself in “Head of A Young Woman”, the bust from the museum’s collection. This is a wonderful example of Art Nouveau, and probably one of the best statues in Maria Dillon’s planned series.
