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| S.S.DAKOTA |
| ORIGINAL
LANCERE SCULPTURE |
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One
of our earliest finds on the wreck of the
S.S.DAKOTA was the base to a bronze sculpture, as
seen on the left. Our initial research on the find
was hampered by the fact that the inscriptions and
casting marks were in some sort of Cyrillic. The
British Museum tried to help to translate this for
us although, they said, the inscriptions were not
wholly Cyrillic, suggesting it to be Russian. They
said the second word of inscription C was "LANSERE"
and that inscription D was "F CHOPEN" (ie
CHOPIN). |
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| As
a result of this we looked towards the connection
with the composer CHOPIN with poor
results.Research into Lansere revealed a famous
Russian Sculptor EVGEMI LANSERE. Several
corruptions of this name exist to hamper the
research- Yeugeni Lanceray, Yevgemi Lancere etc...
the English translation seems to be EUGENE LANCERE.
We found that the foundry he used was called Felix
Chopin and this confirmed we had a genuine
Art-treasure on our hands! |
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| Doctored
photo showing uncleaned Horse & Rider |
20th
Century Copy |
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We
later found a cart and a figure on a hay-stack and
the quest was on to find the horse and figures to
fit on the cart- we couldn't quite get the
haystack-boy to fit (later analysis revealed it to
be of slightly later date)
A chance meeting with one of the 1980's Dakota
divers revealed that the Horse and Rider had been
found several years ago and he was on the dive and
had a photo of it and the finder- who went to live
in Portugal (or S.Africa?) many years ago.
Another, originally helpful, friend of the finder,
from Merseyside SAC, said he had contact with the
finder but has since withdrawn his help. I will
have to look into the legalities of the situation
before I publish my photo of the finder with the
horse and rider to the web in the hope of
re-uniting the pieces.
A
1900s copy of the sculpture was valued several
years ago at $5-6,000 at auction.
The Russian State Hermitage Museum have on display
a Copy of the "Boy on a Haystack" which
can be seen at: |
| http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/html_En/12/b2003/hm12_2_6_11_1.html |
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