Water Boy I
Item
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Artist
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Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller
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Title
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Water Boy I
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Date
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1930
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Medium
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Painted Plaster
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Dimensions
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11 ¼ x 6 ¼ x 3 ½ in. (31.75 x 15.24 x 8.89 cm)
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Accession Number
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2006.337
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On View
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Danforth Art Museum at Framingham State University
Fuller Gallery 204 (Meta Fuller 2, Shelf 2)
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Classification
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Sculpture
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Description
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Boy holding water jug in a tight grasp. He is wearing a v-neck robe. He is in a stooped over position, with the jug on his right side. Great attention to detail of his hair, face, hands and feet. Second jug is below him. Figure is attached to a rectangular base.
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Accrual Method
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Exhibition History: Danforth's "Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller Special Collection Re-installation", March 2016 Collection was gifted to the Danforth in 2006. Unfortunately they sat uncatalogued for close to 10 years. It took until an IMLS grant awarded in 2015 through 2016 for this collection to be catalogued and put into the collections database. - Rachel 2021 Came to us from Robert Fuller. There are between 2 and 3 known. Danforth has one, Warde and Chrislan should have the bronze, and possibly another as one went up to auction in 2010. Meta could have found inspiration from song lyrics of same name and possibly inspired by George Henri Guittet 'African Water Carrier'. The song Water Boy, which originated as an Alabama chain gang song. Introduced in the mid-1800s and used primarily in the southern United States, chain gangs were prisoners who would perform manual labor while chained together as a form of penance for their crimes. By the early 1910s and 1920s, Waterboy made its way into the mainstream. Its popularity increased when Avery Robinson composed a jazz version of Waterboy specifically for the African American tenor singer Roland Hayes. Meta Fuller definitely could have heard numerous versions of this song throughout her lifetime as it was incredibly popular in the 1920s and 1930s with several renditions created for country music, swing band arrangements, blues and folk artists.
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Provenance
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Gift of the Meta V. W. Fuller Trust Part of the Estate of Meta V. W. Fuller from 1968-2001. In the collection of the Meta V. W. Fuller Trust, 2001-2006
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Credit
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Gift of the Meta V. W. Fuller Trust
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Tombstone
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Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller
Waterboy I
1930
Painted Plaster
11.4 x 3.4 x 6.25 in.
