Anna Hyatt Huntington
Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington (March 10 1876 – October 4 ,1973) was a prolific and innovative American sculptor. She was a master 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.
She is a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor
Early years
The youngest of three children, Huntington was born Anna Vaughn Hyatt on March 10, 1876, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 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. She got her artistic nature from her mother, an amateur landscape artist, Aduella Beebe Hyatt.
From an early age, Huntington followed the examples of her parents by acquiring both an extensive knowledge of the anatomy and behavior of animals and an enthusiasm for drawing. As a child at her family's summer home, Seven Acres, in Cape Cod and at her brother's farm, Porto Bello, in rural Maryland, Huntington developed an affection for horses. During her childhood sojourns in the countryside, Huntington also made her first clay models of horses, dogs, and other domestic animals.
Although Huntington was fascinated by the animal world, she initially entered a private school in Cambridge to study the violin and spent several years training to become a professional concert violinist. At the age of 19, while suffering from an illness Huntington assisted her sister, Harriet Hyatt (Mayor), repair the broken foot on a sculpture the elder had produced. Pleased with the results, the elder Hyatt sister asked her to collaborate on a sculpture which included the family dog. The sculpture made it into an exhibition by one of the national art societies and was purchased. Having found both enjoyment and success in her first professional sculpture, Huntington turned away from the violin to study under Boston portrait sculptor Henry Hudson Kitson. Her first one-woman show was held at the Boston Arts Club. It consisted of 40 animal sculptures. Her original plan was to open an art school, however the death of her father and marriage of her sister to Alfred Mayor changed these early plans. Huntington left Massachusetts for New York City.
Studied in New York
In New York Huntington attended the Art Students League, where she studied under three sculptors: George Grey Barnard, Hermon MacNeil, and Gutzon Borglum, the designer of Mount Rushmore. Preferring to work independently, Huntington left formal instruction in favor of direct observation. Over the next few years, she spent much of her time at the Bronx Zoo. The figures modeled from these personal observations, including the 1902 equestrian work Winter Noon and the 1906 sculpture Reaching Jaguar, became Huntington's first major works.
During this period, Huntington shared several studios with other young female artists and musicians; one of these was Abastenia St. Leger Eberle, another up-and-coming sculptor. The two formed an artistic partnership that led them to collaborate on at least two statues: Men and Bull, awarded a bronze medal at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904, and Boy and Goat Playing, exhibited during the spring of 1905 in the gallery of the Society of American Artists. The two sculptors worked together for about two years before following their individual paths, Huntington preferring a more traditional style and Eberle favoring the more modern Ash Can style.
First major commissions
By 1907, Huntington felt confident enough in her abilities to travel to Europe. Choosing to forgo academic study in order to pursue her craft independently, Huntington took a studio in Auvers-sur-Oise where she modeled two more jaguars that were exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1908. In the autumn of 1908, Huntington left France for Naples, Italy, to work on an enormous lion commissioned by a high school in Dayton, Ohio. Huntington returned to the United States for the dedication ceremonies, but went back to France about a year later to commence modeling another grand-scale piece.
For years, Huntington had wanted to produce a life-sized equestrian statue of Joan of Arc. She now devoted herself entirely to this goal. This early model garnered an honorable mention at the Paris Salon of 1910, and led to Huntington's being offered a commission by the City of New York to produce the model in bronze to honor the saint's 500th birthday.
Huntington’s process for creating her large-scale equestrian Joan of Arc demonstrates her dedication to her art. After thoroughly researching the history of Joan of Arc, painstakingly searching for the perfect horse model, renting a large stable-studio in Paris, and consulting the curator of armor at The Metropolitan Museum of Art for accurate accoutrements.[1]
On December 6, 1915, the Joan of Arc 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.[2]
Throughout this period, Huntington received several other commissions and honors, raising her career to new heights. In 1912, she was one of only 12 women in the U.S. making at least $50,000 a year; in 1915, she received the Purple Rosette from the French government; and in 1916, she won the Rodin Gold Medal from the Plastics Club of Philadelphia as well as becoming an associate of the National Academy of Design.[3]
After devoting herself to farm work during World War I she returned to sculpting in 1920, taking on many large commissions and moving to New York City. In 1920 she received the Legion of Honor from France and the Saltus Gold Medal for Artistic Merit from the National Academy of Design. In 1922 a replica of her Joan of Arc bronze was erected in Blois, France, and the French government made her a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor.[4]
Anna also created Diana of the Chase (also known as Diana, or Diana of the Hunt) in 1922. She first modeled and exhibited Diana at the National Academy of Design where it won the Academy's Saltus award, her second in two years. She was also elected as an academician of the Academy. In 1948, the Academy aquired Diana, placing it as the centerpiece of the main stairway of its building, ironically the former home of Anna and Archer Huntington. The sculpture became the unofficial symbol of the Academy itself. Other casts of the sculpture grace many parks and museums across the United States and can be found in France, Cuba and Japan.[5]
By the end of the winter of 1936 Anna and her foundry man were able to complete the casting of 21 new pieces for a large exhibit sponsored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Anna Huntington's first traveling exhibit was organized and began touring in 1937. It contained pieces representative of her forty years as a sculptor.
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.
Huntington received numerous awards, including the Chevalier Legion of Honor, the Purple Rosette from the French government, the Shaw Prize and the Watrous Gold Medal from the National Academy of Design, and gold medals from the Pennsylvania Academy and the Allied Artists of America. She was a member of the Associate National Academy, the National Academy of Design, the National Sculpture Society, the American Federation of Arts, National Institute of Arts and Letters, and the National Association of Women Artists. Huntington's work is recognized in many private collections and museums, including the New Britain Museum of American Art, the Denver Art Museum, the Museum of New Mexico, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brookgreen Gardens, and the National Museum of Wildlife Art.[10]
Marriage
It was Anna Hyatt and Archer Milton Huntington's common love of the arts that first brought them together during the early 1920s. Much to the surprise of their friends they married on March 10, 1923, their mutual birth date. Archer was born March 10, 1870. Anna was born March 10, 1876. Both Anna and Archer flourished in their marriage and Anna characterized Archer as the ultimate sculptor's husband who supported her work not only financially but emotionally as well as spiritually.[6]
Following a brief withdrawal to Cape Cod during World War I, Huntington returned to New York City to take up new works, including a standing Joan of Arc and two sculptures depicting the Greek goddess Diana. One of these, Diana of the Chase, won the National Academy of Design's Saltus Award in 1922.
Around this time, Huntington was working with railroad heir and philanthropist Archer Milton Huntington on an upcoming Hispanic Society sculpture exhibition. The two married quietly—and suddenly—in Huntington's studio on her 47th birthday in 1923. According to American Women Sculptors, "[b]oth were tall, imposing figures; they shared cultural interests and a sense of noblesse oblige toward their community. It was said of Archer Huntington that wherever he put his foot down, a museum sprang up." The couple took an extended honeymoon; following their return to New York, Huntington took on several new commissions, including her second major equestrian work, El Cid Campeador, in honor of the medieval Spanish warrior.
Sometime between 1915 and 1920 Anna met Archer Huntington at a Beaux Arts Ball in New York City, where she masqueraded as Joan of Arc (one of her most popular sculptures and the one for which she won the above awards.) In 1921 she received a commission from Archer for the Mitre Medal for the Hispanic Society of America. She responded, "It is an unusual stimulus to work for one whose gifts and taste promise the keenest judgement and appreciation." She was in love with Archer but was hesitant to become Mrs. Archer Huntington as she preferred the simple life and didn't want the demanding social life of the very wealthy. They worked together in late 1922 and 1923 on arrangements for a sculpture exhibit at the Hispanic Society. At some point, Archer became hospitalized from “extreme gluttony.” Reportedly, he felt he was a failure after his first marriage dissolved and was trying to commit suicide in a more gentlemanly fashion than shooting himself or throwing himself from a window. He begged Anna to marry him as he lay in the hospital and she accepted, seeing him as a wounded animal that needed gentle treatment. They married quietly in her studio on their joint birthday, March 10, 1923. He was 53 and she was 47 years old.
Anna had no cause for regret. She later praised his support "spiritually, mentally and materially." She felt he was completely in sympathy with her need to work. He also flourished, losing a great deal of weight and writing many books of poetry. She was always a quiet, modest, no-nonsense person and welcomed Archer's advice to keep most of their intentions silent. "That way," he said, "people could comment little, and interfere less."[11][12]
From the mid-1920s on, Huntington battled tuberculosis, reducing her output dramatically. Most of Huntington's works during this time were inspired by her husband's fascination with Spanish culture; she produced a number of pieces for the New York grounds of the Hispanic Society of America, founded by her husband. In spite of decreased production, Huntington continued to enjoy public recognition, as detailed in Sculpture in America: "[Huntington's] Fighting Bulls received the Shaw Prize at the National Academy [of Design] show in 1928, and the following year she received the Grand Cross of Alfonso XII from the Spanish government; in 1930 she won the Gold Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and two years later Syracuse University gave her an honorary Doctor of Arts degree in recognition of her work." Huntington was also made an Officer of the French Legion of Honor in 1933.<[13]
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
- 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 ([14]).
- 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 ; 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.
- 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
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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[7]
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.[8]
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.[9]
Notes
ReferencesISBN 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
- Collis P. Huntington State Park
- Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington Memorial at Find A Grave
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