Paul Manship
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Paul Howard Manship (December 24, 1885 – January 28, 1966) was a prominent American sculptor of the 20th century.
Paul Manship began his art studies at the St. Paul School of Art in Minnesota. From there he moved to Philadelphia and continued his education at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Following that he migrated to New York City where he enrolled in the Art Students League, studying anatomy with George Bridgman and modeling under Hermon Atkins MacNeil. From 1905 to 1907 he served as an assistant to sculptor Solon Borglum and spent the two years after that studying with Charles Grafly and assisting Isidore Konti.
In 1909, at Konti's urging, he entered the competition for, and won, the highly sought-after Prix de Rome and shortly thereafter decamped for Rome where he attended the American Academy from 1909 until 1912. While in Europe he became increasingly interested in Archaic art, his own work began to take on some archaic features, and he became more and more attracted to classical subjects. He also developed an interest in classical sculpture of India, and traces of that influence can be observed in his work (see "Dancer and Gazelles" in Images). Manship was one of the first artists to become aware of the vast scope of art history being newly excavated at the time and became intensely interested in Egyptian, Assyrian and pre-classical Greek sculpture.
When he returned to America from his European sojourn, Manship found that his style was attractive to both modernists and conservatives. His simplification of line and detail appealed to those who wished to move beyond the Beaux-Arts classical realism prevalent in the day. Also, his view of and use of a more traditional "beauty" as well as an avoidance of the more radical and abstract trends in art made his works attractive to more conservative art collectors. Manship's work is often considered to be a major precursor to Art Deco.
Manship produced over 700 works in his career and always employed assistants of the highest quality. At least two of them, Gaston Lachaise and Leo Friedlander, went on to create significant places for themselves in the history of American sculpture.
Although not known as a portraitist, he did produce statues and busts of Theodore Roosevelt, Samuel Osgood, John D. Rockefeller, Robert Frost, Gifford Beal and Henry L. Stimson. Manship was very adept at low relief and used these skills to produce a large number of coins and medals, one of his later ones being the John F. Kennedy inaugural medal.
Manship was chosen by the American Battle Monuments Commission to create monuments following both the First and Second World Wars. There are located respectively in the American Cemetery at Thiaucourt, France in 1926, and in the military cemetery at Anzio, Italy.
Although he did not produce many public monuments in his long and illustrious career, like many other sculptors of the day Manship created some architectural sculpture and a number of fountains. These include:
- Earth, Air, Water and Fire, bronze reliefs for the Western Union Building, (now 195 Broadway), New York City, 1914
- relief in honor of J. Pierpont Morgan at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1920
- Paul Rainey Memorial Gateway, Bronx Zoo, New York, 1934
- the Prometheus Fountain, Rockefeller Center, New York, 1934. The Prometheus Fountain is, by far, the most familiar of all of Manship's work, but it's atypical of his style and he himself did not care for it.
Manship was also father of the artist and sculptor John Manship (1927-2000).
[edit] References
- Conner, Janis and Joel Rosenkranz, Rediscoveries in American Sculpture, Studio Works 1893 – 1939, University of Texas, Austin, Texas 1989
- Greenthal, Kozol, Rameirez & Fairbanks, American Figurative Sculpture in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 1986
- Manship, John, Paul Manship, (New York, Abbeville Press, 1989, ISBN 1-55859-002-1)
- Murtha, Edwin, Paul Manship, (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1957)
- Nishiura, Elizabeth, editor, American Battle Monuments: A Guide to Military Cemeteries and Monuments Maintained By the American Battle Monuments Commission, Omnigraphics Inc., Detroit, Michigan 1989
- Opitz, Glenn B., editor, Mantle Fielding’s Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors & Engravers, Apollo Book, Poughkeepsie NY, 1986
- Proske, Beatrice Gilman, Brookgreen Gardens Sculpture, Brookgreen Gardens, South Carolina, 1968
- Rand, Harry, Paul Manship, (London, Lund Humphries Publishers Limited, 1989, ISBN 0-85331-555-8)
- Rather, Susan, Archaism, Modernism and the art of Paul Manship, University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas, 1993
- Vitry, Paul, Paul Manship: Sculpteur Americain, Editions De La Gazette Des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1927
[edit] External links
- Detailed biography (cached pages from the Internet Archive with no images)
[edit] Images
 "Diana and a Hound" |
 "Prometheus" at Rockefeller Center |
 "Group of Bears" |
 "Dancer with Gazelles", 1916 |
 "Indian Hunter and His Dog", 1926 |
 "Young Lincoln" or "Hoosier Youth", Fort Wayne, Indiana, 1932 |
 "Young Lincoln" or "Hoosier Youth" (detail), Fort Wayne, Indiana, 1932 |
 "Evening" (foreground) at Brookgreen Gardens, Pawley Island, South Carolina, 1938 |
