Anna Hyatt Huntington

José Martí, Central Park, New York City

The Holy Family Resting - The Flight Into Egypt, a bronze sculpture created by Anna Hyatt Huntington, presented to the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Washington, D.C., 1963

Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington (March 10 1876 – October 4 ,1973) was an American sculptor. She was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

A prolific and innovative American sculptor, Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington (1876-1973) was one of the masters of naturalistic animal sculpture. Particularly noted for her equestrian statues, Huntington, along with her husband, helped found nearly 20 museums and wildlife preserves as well as America's first sculpture garden, Brookgreen Gardens in South Carolina.

most prolific American artists of the 20th century, producing hundreds of models that were cast in bronze and some even in aluminum.

She is a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor

Early years

She spent much time at the Bronx Zoo sketching and modeling the wild animals there. She went to France and Italy to study receiving many awards and honors for her works there

Her father, Alpheus Hyatt, was a professor of paleontology and zoology at Harvard University and MIT, a contributing factor to her early interest in animals and animal anatomy. Huntington initially studied with Henry Hudson Kitson in Boston, who threw her out after she identified equine anatomical deficiencies in his work [see Rubinstein in references].

She studied later with Hermon Atkins MacNeil and Gutzon Borglum at the Art Students League in New York City.

In addition to these formal studies she spent many hours doing extensive study of animals in various zoos and circuses.

Sculptor

n New York, a prominent group of citizens formed a Joan of Arc monument committee in 1909. Their efforts coincided with those of a young sculptor, Anna Hyatt Huntington, to create a sculpture of Joan. Her first version, in which she emphasized “the spiritual rather than the warlike point of view,” was submitted to the prestigious Salon in Paris. It received an honorable mention from the jury, nevertheless skeptical that such an accomplished work of art could have been made solely by a woman.

The New York monument committee, headed by J. Sanford Saltus, was so impressed by her work, that they awarded her the commission. Architect John van Pelt was retained to design the pedestal, which is made of Mohegan granite composed of Gothic-style blind arches, decorated with coats of arms. A few limestone blocks from the tower in Rouen where Joan of Arc had been imprisoned were incorporated into the base. Van Pelt situated the monument at the top of the steps in the park island at 93rd Street and Riverside, and had planted a screen of trees to disguise the buildings.

Huntington’s version is both heroic and infused with naturalistic detail. For Joan’s armor, she conducted research at the arms and armory division of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the refinement of the equine anatomy was based on a horse borrowed from the fire department of her native town of Gloucester, Massachusetts. Her niece posed astride a barrel, as she modeled the figure, first nude, then in costume.

On December 6, 1915, the sculpture was unveiled in an elaborate ceremony, which included a military band and French Ambassador Jean J. Jusserand. Mrs. Thomas Alva Edison was among those selected to pull the cord that released the shroud. Huntington went on to have a long and illustrious career, and also sculpted the statue of the Cuban patriot, José Martí (1965), which stands at Central Park South and Avenue of the Americas. A replica of Joan of Arc stands in front of the Palace of the Legion of Honor in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco.

She was one of two hundred and fifty sculptors who exhibited in the 3rd Sculpture International held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the summer of 1949.

Other activities

Huntington and her husband, Archer Milton Huntington, founded Brookgreen Gardens near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. She was a member of the National Academy of Design and the National Sculpture Society and a donation of $100,000 from her and her husband made possible the NSS Exhibition of 1929 [see references]. Because of her husband's enormous wealth and the shared interests of the couple, the Huntington's were responsible for founding fourteen museums and four wild life preserves.

Public equestrian monuments

El Cid, Balboa Park, San Diego, California

• Joan of Arc, Riverside Drive, New York City, Gloucester, Massachusetts and Blois, France for which she was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor by the government of France in (1915)
• El Cid, Hispanic Society of America (New York City), California Palace of the Legion of Honor (San Francisco, California), Washington, D.C., and Balboa Park, San Diego, California, and Seville, Spain (1927)
• José Martí, Central Park, New York City, begun in the mid 1950s, when the artist was over eighty years old, but not unveiled until 1965 due to the political ramifications of so honoring a Cuban nationalist
• Andrew Jackson, A Boy of The Waxhaws, Andrew Jackson State Park, Lancaster, South Carolina, depicts a young Andy Jackson, sitting astride a farm horse. It is a bronze, larger-than-life statue. Usually her horses were noble, prancing, fierce beasts. She made Jackson's horse a gentler animal by fixing the energy and tension of the work on the figure of young Jackson. The sculpture was initiated by a letter from a sixth-grade class at Rice Elementary School in Lancaster, South Carolina, asking Mrs. Huntington if she would sculpt a statue of young Andrew Jackson for the state park. Mrs. Huntington submitted to do so, and replied, in part, "A picture came to mind as I read your letter and I have tried out the composition. I have Jackson as a young man of sixteen or seventeen seated bareback on a farm horse, one hand leaning on the horse's rump and looking over his native hills, to wonder what the future holds for him. He must have been a good looking and thoughtful boy, wondering what the future might hold, moments we all have from our teens to our nineties." The statue was completed at her Bethel, Connecticut studio, and was first worked in clay in half the scale of the final statue. Even then, it was necessary for the octogenarian sculptress to use a tall ladder to reach the top. South Carolina school children responded by donating their nickels and dimes to raise the necessary funds for a massive base to support the statue, which looks out over the large expanse of lawn at the park. County workmen placed the statue on its Lancaster County, South Carolina pink granite base in time for the ceremony marking Andrew Jackson's 200th birthday, in March 1967. This was Huntington's last major work, completed after her ninety-first birthday. The statue is located at Andrew Jackson State Park, about nine miles north of Lancaster, South Carolina, just off US 521.
• General Israel Putnam, Putnam Memorial Park, Redding, Connecticut, commemorates General Putnam's escape from the British in 1779 when he rode down a cliff at Horseneck Heights in Greenwich, Connecticut. The statue is located at the intersection of Routes 58 and 107 at the entrance to Putnam Park. A picture of this statue may be seen at ([5]).
• Other equestrian statues by Huntington greet visitors to the entrance to Redding Elementary School, Rt. 107 and John Read Middle School, Rt. 53 and at the Mark Twain Library, Rt. 53, all in Redding, Connecticut. The statue at the elementary school is called "Fighting Stallions" and the one at the middle school is called "A Tribute to the Workhorse".
• Los Portadores de la Antorcha ("The Torch Bearers"), cast aluminum, Ciudad Universitaria, Madrid, was given to the people of Spain to symbolize the passing of the torch of Western civilization from age to youth; it was unveiled 15 May 1955. Replicas of the statue are on the grounds of:
  • The Discovery Museum, Park Avenue in Bridgeport, Connecticut, one mile south of Merritt Parkway Exit 47; cast bronze.
  • The University of South Carolina's Wardlaw College at 33.9967864266271° N 81.03052139282227° W; cast bronze.
  • Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, New Jersey at {{#invoke:Coordinates|coord}}{{#coordinates:40|44|40.6|N|74|01|29.2|W|type:landmark_region:US-NJ

| |name= }}; cast aluminum, April 1964.

• • The Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia at {{#invoke:Coordinates|coord}}{{#coordinates:36|51|21.8|N|76|17|37.0|W|type:landmark_region:US-VA

| |name= }}; cast aluminum, 1957.

Statue of Sybil Ludington on Gleneida Avenue in Carmel, New York by Anna Hyatt Huntington

• The sculptor created a statue of Sybil Ludington to commemorate the 1777 ride of this 16-year-old who rode forty miles at night to warn local militia of approaching British troops in response to the burning of Danbury, Connecticut. The statue is located on Rt. 52 next to Glenedia Lake in Carmel, New York (1961).
• A peaceful statue of Abraham Lincoln reading a book, while sitting on a grazing horse is located in front of the Bethel Public Library, Rt. 302 in Bethel, Connecticut. The statue bears the signature, Anna Huntington, with the date of 1961.
• "Conquering the Wild" overlooks the Lions Bridge and Lake Maury at the Mariner's Museum Park in Newport News, Va.

Other works

Her animal sculptures, figures of both life-sized and in smaller proportions, are in museums and collections throughout the United States. She spent two years collaborating with Abastenia St. Leger Eberle to produce Man and Bull, which was exhibited at the St. Louis Exposition in 1904.

• Mother Bear&Cubs Anna Hyatt Huntington.jpg

  Mother Bear and Cubs, at Earthplace, Westport, Connecticut

• 

  Wolves at Collis_P._Huntington_State_Park, Redding, Connecticut

• 

  Los Portadores de la Antorcha ("The Torch-bearers"), cast aluminum, Ciudad Universitaria, Madrid

• 

  Horse Trainer

Two statues by Anna Hyatt Huntington grace the entrance to Collis P. Huntington State Park in Redding and Bethel, Connecticut. One statue shows a mother bear with her cubs and the other statue shows two wolves howling. The park was donated to the state of Connecticut by Anna Hyatt Huntington and Archer M. Huntington. In her Horse Trainer (Balboa Park, San Diego)she enlivens the theme of the Roman marble Horse Tamers of the Quirinale, Rome, which had been taken up by Guillaume Coustou for the horses of Marly.

Death

Woodlawn Cemetery - New York City, New York Huntington Family Tomb Also buried here is his son Archer Huntington, the philanthropist who founded the Hispanic Society of America in New York City. Archer's wife, Anna Hyatt Huntington the famous sculptress, is buried here. The architect of the tomb is Robert Caterson. Herbert Adams designed the doors in 1932.

• Atalaya and Brookgreen Gardens, a National Historic Landmark site in South Carolina
• Berkshire Museum, Massachusetts

Legacy

Anna Hyatt Huntington Papers Special Collections Research Center Syracuse University Library.

1920 Anna Hyatt Huntington Bronze Sculpture, "Yawning Tiger" Appraised Value:$8,000 - $12,000 Appraised on: July 8, 2006 Appraised in: Mobile, Alabama Appraised by: Eric Silver

n anticipation of the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth in 2009, the 2006 Springfield City Ornament depicts "Abraham Lincoln: On the Prairie," the sculpture at the entrance to New Salem where he lived as a young man.

The sculpture by Anna Hyatt Huntington portrays young Abe on horseback, reading a lawbook. Springfield artist Stan Squires interpreted the statue for this design, silhouetting Lincoln and his horse between wisps of prairie grass and a split-rail fence.

Bob Hope's crypt grotto features a bronze sculpture replica of Anna Hyatt Huntington's "The Holy Family Resting --- Flight into Egypt," located at The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary in Washington D.C. Bob's mother-in-law, Teresa Kelly DeFina and his deceased son, Anthony J. Hope, are currently interred in the garden with additional places for other family members.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Armstrong, Craven, et al., 200 Years of American Sculpture, Whitney Museum of Art, New York, 1976.
• Craven, Wayne, Sculpture in America, Thomas Y. Crowell Co, New York, 1968.
• Evans, Cerinda W., Anna Hyatt Huntington, The Mariners Museum, Newport News, Virginia, 1965.
• National Sculpture Society, Contemporary American Sculpture 1929, National Sculpture Society, New York, 1929.
• Proske, Beatrice Gilman, Brookgreen Gardens Sculpture, Brookgreen Gardens, South Carolina, 1968.
• Opitz, Glenn B , Editor, Mantle Fielding’s Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors & Engravers, Apollo Book, Poughkeepsie, New York, 1986.
• Rubenstein, Charlotte Streifer, American Women Sculptors, G.K. Hall & Co., Boston, 1990.
• Leary, Joseph, A Shared Landscape: A Guide & History of Connecticut's State Parks & Forests, Friends of Connecticut State Parks Inc., Hartford, CT, 2004.

External links

• Anna Hyatt
• Anna V. Hyatt Huntington
• Brookgreen Gardens
• Seckler, Dorothy. 1964. Interview with Anna Hyatt Huntington
• Anna Hyatt Huntington
• National Museum of Women in the Arts
• Anna Hyatt Huntington
• ARCHER MILTON HUNTINGTON
• The Hispanic Society of America
• Whyld, Bea. 2005. ANNA HYATT HUNTINGTON AND THE HUNTINGTON GREAT DANES
• Playing Greyhound
• Stradivari of Golf
• [http://www.ct.gov/dep/cwp/view.asp?a=2716&q=325222&depNav_GID=1650 Collis P. Huntington

State Park]

• Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington Memorial at Find A Grave

Credits

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