Paul Manship

After yesterday’s post on Paul Manship, I am in a sculptural frame of mind. My mind turns to the intersection of two of my favorite subjects: horticulture and sculpture.

In no place on earth do these two subjects (and one more–which you will find out at the end of this post–it is a secret until then) come together better than in the Central Park Conservatory in this famous New York park. If you have never been to this garden, put it on your bucket list. Here is a photo and some information from the Conservatory’s website:

Conservatory Garden in Central Park

“The Conservatory Garden‘s….main entrance is through the Vanderbilt Gate, on Fifth Avenue between 104th and 105th Streets. This magnificent iron gate, made in Paris in 1894, originally stood before the Vanderbilt mansion at Fifth Avenue and 58th Street.”

That certainly sets the stage. Thank you Conservatory website.

Now, back to Bessie Potter Vonnoh.

So, who was this artist and what is this gorgeous monument in New York, surrounded by a pond of lilies, all about?

Bessie Potter Vonnoh (BPV) was born in St. Louis in 1872 and grew up in Chicago. Her enlightened mother encouraged her to study at the Art Institute, where she was fortunate to study with one of the most well-known sculptors of the time, Loredo Taft. This was a critical moment both for Taft’s life as well as for the art life of the United States. In 1893, the World’s Columbian Exposition was held in Chicago and Taft was commissioned to create an entire sculptural program to decorate the exterior of the Horticultural Building, an important venue at the Expo, and BPV became a valued assistant. She also produced an independent commission, the Personification of Art, for the Illinois State Building.

Indeed, the 1890s were a decade of important events in her life. In 1895 she met Auguste Rodin in Paris and enjoyed some critical success, as well as receiving an important civic commission back in the U.S.. Four years later the sculptor married impressionist painter Robert Vonnoh. In the French Exposition Universelle of 1890, BPV won a bronze medal for two works.

“The Belle Epoch” in the U.S. was a great time of World’s Fairs, and art played an important role in all of these expos. BPV enjoyed successful participation in many of these, including the 1901 Pan-American Exposition (Buffalo, NY) and at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition (St Louis, MO).

Just for fun, allow yourself to get lost in this delightful, idealized bird’s-eye view of the fairgrounds at Buffalo. It gives you a sense of how wonderful these artificial grounds must have been. You could also watch the Judy Garland classic movie, Meet Me in St. Louis, for another fun introduction to the big expos of the time. I digress.

In 1913 BVP was fortunate to have a solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum and a few years later she became the first woman elected to the then-prestigious National Academy of Design. While this was a great honor–an acceptance into the established art world–it also signals BVP’s holding pattern in the conservative camp of American art through the next decades of her life (she died in 1955).

Vonnoh even exhibited at the famed Armory Show in 1915. One can about imagine her reaction to the modernist works she saw there!

Armory show notwithstanding, sculpture designed specifically for garden settings became a very popular art form for early 20th century American patrons of art and BPV enjoyed success working in this format. The lovely Frances Hodgson Burnett Memorial Fountain in the Central Park Conservatory is, I think, her finest example.

You may know that Frances Hodgson Burnett was a British/American playwright and author, perhaps best-known today for her wonderful children’s classic and one of my own very favorite books, The Secret Garden. Here is a cover of the book when it was first published in 1911.

At the beginning of this post I said that BPV’s sculpture in Central Park is a wonderful intersection of sculpture and horticulture. Now you see that it also includes children’s literature. What could be better? Art, literature, horticulture; I love them all.

Many people will recognize this iconic image of “Prometheus” from Rockefeller Center. This giant gilt-bronze statue depicts the young Greek god who fashioned humankind from clay as well as stealing fire for mankind’s use. Said to be the most photographed sculpture in all of New York, I wonder how many know its maker, Paul Manship (1885-1966)?

Manship was born in Minnesota and went to art schools in Philadelphia and New York. In 1909 he won the Rome Prize which allowed him an idyllic study at the American Academy in Rome until 1912.

This picture shows a typical fountain designed by Manship. I love this insouciant toddler, who lifts his head in pure joy while impishly holding two pitiable frogs. Despite his nudity, which could be excused both for the boy’s youth and for the figure’s obvious reliance on classical sculpture, work similar to this found a ready audience in American art circles of the pre-WWI United States.

Under the spell of the Italy, Manship familiarized himself with the art of the world and was especially taken with Archaic (pre-classical) Greek sculpture.

His own sculpture took on the characteristics of Archaic sculpture and he began treating classical subjects, such this gorgeous and completely new and vanguard treatment of “Europa and the Bull.”

The American art world to which Manship returned in 1912 was stuck aesthetically in the so-called “Beaux-Arts” tradition and was just beginning to feel the punch of the newer, more “modern” approach. Sculptors were very much behind painters. Manship’s post-Italy work, which was smooth, sleek and very simplified with highly elongated forms, caught the wave of the modernist aesthetic, while not upsetting the more conservative American approach.

The fact that Manship’s post-European bronze sculpture abstained abstraction made him a favorite with art collectors. Today we see in his work the advent of what we now call Art Deco, as you can clearly see in this 1916 work entitled “Dancer and Gazelles.”

This is Manship’s “Diana of the Hunt”, showing the woman and her hound of classical mythology. With work such as the ones pictured here, Manship not only established himself as a sculptor of note, but became one of the leading –and highly influential–figures of the established art life of the U.S. His expertise and taste had a lasting impact on the 20th century American aesthetic, which is important to remember, for by the 1940s his own work can be seen to be quite conservative.

My own personal experience with Manship’s work really took shape while I was a visiting scholar in 1985 at the American Academy in Rome. I was beyond fortunate to be a Chester Dale Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for three years starting in 1985 and, as a part of that lucky break, I spent three months in Rome in the fall of 1985. Many mornings I sat in the out-door courtyard of the McKim, Meade and White building near the Aurelian Wall in Trastevere.

In the center of this wonderful building in this incredible setting was the fountain pictured above. As I sat drinking cappuchino and planning my attack on the archives in the city of Rome for the day, week, or month, I would gaze at this Manship statue and listen to the soft play of water. As I look back, I am so grateful for the vision the Academy’s founders had and the collaboration between architects and sculptors for providing future generations with such a setting in which to be inspired. Thank you Paul Manship!

get back, lauretta!

all things beautiful, with piccoli pezzi of Italian, a soupçon of French, & now ein bisschen of German!

American art: Bessie Potter Vonnoh

American Art: Paul Manship.