The 1910s saw the first attempts to create three-dimensional sculptures of human ancestors. James H. McGregor created a number of busts for the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and the Belgian sculptor Louis Mascré (1871-1929) did the same in Europe, for his patron, Aimé Rutot. Mascré’s sculptures were cast in bronze; they still survive, and were the subject of an exhibition in France in 19XX. He did ten busts in all. Here we see “L’homme de Mauer,” or Heidelberg Man, as he would be called elsewhere, reconstructed form the lower jaw found at Mauer, near Heidelberg, in 1907 (see item 33). Three other sculptures by Mascré, along with three by McGregor, can be seen on our wall panel, “Sculpting Ancestors.”
Human ancestor of the Tertiary Era. Image source: Rutot, Aimé. Un essai de reconstitution plastique des races humaines primitives. Brussels: Hayez, 1919, pl. 1.
The Sussex man, Eoanthropus dawsoni. Image source: Rutot, Aimé. Un essai de reconstitution plastique des races humaines primitives. Brussels: Hayez, 1919, pl. 2.
