Anna Hyatt Huntington

Anna Hyatt Huntington
Anna Hyatt Huntington
Born	Anna Vaughn Hyatt (1876-03-10)March 10, 1876 Cambridge, Massachusetts
Died	October 4, 1973(1973-10-04) (aged 97) Redding, Connecticut
Nationality	American
Education	Art Students League of New York
Known for	Sculpture
Awards	Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur[1]

Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington (March 10, 1876 – October 4, 1973) was an American sculptor and was once among New York City's most prominent sculptors. At a time when very few women were successful artists, she had a thriving career. She exhibited often, traveled widely, received critical acclaim at home and abroad, and won awards and commissions. During the first two decades of the 20th century, Hyatt Huntington became famous for her animal sculptures, which combine vivid emotional depth with skillful realism. In 1915, she created the first public monument in New York City by a woman: Her Joan of Arc, located on Riverside Drive at 93rd Street, is also the city’s first monument dedicated to a historical woman.^[2]

Life and career

Huntington was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her father, Alpheus Hyatt, was a professor of paleontology and zoology at Harvard University and MIT, and served as a contributing factor to her early interest in animals and animal anatomy. Anna Hyatt first studied with Henry Hudson Kitson in Boston, who threw her out after she identified equine anatomical deficiencies in his work (Rubenstein 1990). Later she studied with Hermon Atkins MacNeil and Gutzon Borglum at the Art Students League of New York. In addition to these formal studies she spent many hours doing extensive study of animals in various zoos (including the Bronx Zoo)^[3] and circuses. She was one of 250 sculptors who exhibited in the 3rd Sculpture International held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the summer of 1949.

In 1932, Huntington became the first woman artist to be elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.^[4]

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. Because of her husband's enormous wealth and the shared interests of the couple, the Huntingtons were responsible for founding fourteen museums and four wildlife preserves. They also gifted Collis P. Huntington State Park, consisting of approximately 800 acres (3.2 km²) of land in Redding, Connecticut, to the State of Connecticut.

She was the aunt of the art historian A. Hyatt Mayor.

Death and legacy

Anna Hyatt Huntington, works on a statue of Jose Marti

Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington died October 4, 1973. She is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, New York,^[5] next to her husband Archer Milton Huntington who preceded her in death on December 11, 1955.^[6]

Her papers are held at Syracuse University,^[7] and the Archives of American Art.^[8]

The Metropolitan Museum of Art listed Huntington among the foremost woman sculptors in the United States to have undertake large, publicly commissioned works, alongside Malvina Hoffman and Evelyn Longman.^[9]

Public equestrian monuments

Her animal sculptures, figures of both life-sized and in smaller proportions, are in museums and collections throughout the United States. Hyatt Huntington’s work is now displayed in many of New York’s leading institutions and outdoor spaces, including Columbia University, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Academy of Design, the New-York Historical Society, the Hispanic Society of America, the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, Central Park, Riverside Park and the Bronx Zoo.^[2] 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.

The Hispanic Society of America was founded in 1904 by her husband, Archie Huntington. Anna was responsible for the art in its courtyard,^[10] including:

• the towering 1927 bronze statue, El Cid^[11]—there are also editions in Seville, Spain, Lincoln Park, San Francisco, Balboa Park, San Diego, and Buenos Aires, Argentina
• the four bronze Castillian warriors around the El Cid statue,
• the bronze flagpole bases,
• the limestone bas-relief of Don Quixote, and
• the limestone bas-relief of Boabdil, the last Moorish king of Spain.

Two statues by Anna Hyatt Huntington are located at the entrance to Collis P. Huntington State Park in Redding and Bethel, Connecticut: "Mother Bear and Cubs" and "Sculpture of Wolves". The park was donated to the state of Connecticut by the Huntingtons. 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. The statue at the elementary school is called "Fighting Stallions" and the one at the middle school is called "A Tribute to the Workhorse". The sculpture at the Mark Twain Library, also called "The Torch Bearers" is identical in form to the one in Madrid, but is cast in bronze and appears to be smaller.

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.

Huntington's Joan of Arc stands at the intersection of Riverside Drive and Ninety-third Street in Manhattan. The work earned her the first-place award at an exhibit in Paris in 1910 that was taken back when the judges stated that it was too good to have been created by a woman. There are other versions in San Francisco, Blois, Gloucester, Massachusetts and Quebec City, Quebec.

• 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 sculptor 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 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 (14 km) 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.^[12]
• Los Portadores de la Antorcha ("The Torch Bearers"), cast aluminum, Ciudad Universitaria Dental School, 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.^[13] At the time of its construction it was the largest statue in the world at 3,500 pounds (1,600 kg).^[14] Replicas of the statue are on the grounds of:
  • The Discovery Museum, Park Avenue in Bridgeport, Connecticut, one mile (1.6 km) south of Merritt Parkway Exit 47; cast bronze.
  • The Mark Twain Library in Redding, Connecticut, cast bronze.
  • The University of South Carolina's Wardlaw College at 33°59′48″N 81°01′50″W / 33.99679°N 81.03052°W / 33.99679; -81.03052; cast bronze.^[15]
  • Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, New Jersey at 40°44′40.6″N 74°01′29.2″W / 40.744611°N 74.024778°W / 40.744611; -74.024778; cast aluminum, April 1964.
  • The Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia at 36°51′21.8″N 76°17′37.0″W / 36.856056°N 76.293611°W / 36.856056; -76.293611; 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). Smaller versions of the statue exist on the grounds of the DAR Headquarters in Washington, DC; on the grounds of the public library, Danbury, Connecticut; and in the Elliot and Rosemary Offner museum at Brookgreen Gardens, Murrells Inlet, South Carolina.
• 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.^[16]
• "Conquering the Wild" overlooks the Lions Bridge and Lake Maury at The Mariners' Museum Park in Newport News, Va.

Photographic gallery

• 

  Joan of Arc, Ninety-third Street, Manhattan

• 

  The Holy Family Resting - The Flight Into Egypt, Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Washington, D.C.
  

• 

  José Martí, Central Park, New York City
  

• 

  Fighting Stallions, 1950, aluminum, entrance to Brookgreen Gardens, Murrells Inlet, South Carolina
  

• 

  Los Portadores de la Antorcha ("The Torch-bearers"), cast aluminum, Ciudad Universitaria, Madrid^[1]
  

• 

  Los Portadores de la Antorcha ("The Torch-bearers"), cast bronze, Discovery Museum and Planetarium, Bridgeport, Connecticut
  

• 

  Los Portadores de la Antorcha ("The Torch-bearers"), cast bronze, Habana, Cuba
  

• 

  Mother Bear and Cubs, at Earthplace, Westport, Connecticut
  

• 

  Mother Bear and Cubs, Huntington State Park, Redding, Connecticut
  

• 

  Don Quixote, aluminum 1947, Brookgreen Gardens, Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

• 

  Sybil Ludington, 1961, Lake Carmel, New York

• 

  Smaller Sybil Ludington statue close-up, Offner museum, Brookgreen Gardens

• 

  Sculpture of Wolves, Huntington State Park, Redding, Connecticut
  

• 

  Young Abe Lincoln on Horseback, bronze 1966, on the campus of the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Syracuse, New York

• 

  El Cid Campeador, bronze 1923, the central sculpture at the entrance to the Hispanic Society of America, New York City

• 

  Cid Campeador, a monument to El Cid unveiled in Buenos Aires in 1935^[2]

• 

  Cid Campeador, a monument to El Cid in Seville

• 

  Youth Conquering the Wild at The Mariners Museum in Newport News, Virginia

• 

  One of the Reaching Jaguar sculptures at The Mariners Museum in Newport News, Virginia

1. ^ Christen, Arden G., and Joan A. Christen. 2007. "An Ethical Lesson Learned from the Equestrian Sculpture, "The Torch Bearers," at the University of Madrid Dental School," Journal of the History of Dentistry 55(3): 160-164. Accessed: March 8, 2013.
2. ^ Wright, Robert. 2011, May 31. "Buenos Aires: Monumento al Cid Campeador," Line of Sight (blog). Accessed: March 8, 2013.

See also

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

Notes

References

• 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

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Anna Hyatt Huntington.

• Anna Hyatt Huntington Papers at Syracuse University
• Oral history interview with Anna Hyatt-Huntington, (c. 1964)
• Goddess, Heroine, Beast: Anna Hyatt Huntington's New York Sculpture, 1902–1936 (exhibition), January 22 – March 15, 2014, the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University
• Brookgreen Gardens, at Murrells Inlet, South Carolina
• Anna Hyatt Huntington at Find a Grave