The figure of Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) is Davidson’s best-known sculpture due to the reputation of the sitter and modernity of the work itself Stein was a champion of the avantgarde in both her writings and patronage of early twentieth-century modernist art. She collected the works of Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), and Henri Matisse (1869-1954), and in her Paris salon numerous American artists were exposed to radical European trends.
As he explained, Davidson chose not to sculpt just a head of Stein because "there was so much more to her than that." He faithfully conveyed the massiveness of Stein’s figure as an immobile, pyramidal form with the weight massed at the base. He did not allow the surface treatment to weaken the primary effect of bulk and limited the linear markings to a few detailsthe collar, cuffs, and pin-and suggested texture only in the clothing. This "modern Buddha," as Davidson called it, suggests the eternal quality that the sculptor thought Stein possessed.
Although Davidson wrote that he modeled Stein’s portrait in 1923 and the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., dates its terra-cotta to that year, the most famous bronze cast of the sculpture, owned by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, is dated 1920, and the work was mentioned in periodicals in 1922.
