About the artist:

Boris Lovet-Lorski studied architecture and sculpture at the Imperial Academy of Art in St. Petersburg. He worked as an architect in Russia until 1920, when he immigrated to the United States and decided to focus on sculpture. He settled in New York, but continued to travel all over the world in search of new and unusual types of stone, describing his collection of marble, lava, and onyx blocks as colored "jewels." He carved portrait busts of four American presidents, as well as of members of the royal families in Greece and Italy. He was inspired by the nude human figure and even tried briefly to go without clothes himself, but found he was annoyed and distracted by the clothing of others.