Frederick MacMonnies
1863
–1937
BirthplaceBrooklyn, New York, United States of America
Death placeNew York, New York, United States of America
BiographyFrederick MacMonnies was a successful and popular sculptor working in the so-called Beaux-Arts mode of figural representation that blended idealism, naturalism, and references to the classical past. Born in Brooklyn, New York, MacMonnies showed an early talent for modeling and at the age of eighteen he became a studio assistant to rising sculptor Augustus Saint Gaudens (1848–1907), with whom he enjoyed a close, if sometimes contentious, relationship. MacMonnies also studied at New York's National Academy of Design and Cooper Union. In 1884 he traveled to Paris to enroll at the Académie Colarossi, but an outbreak of cholera in the city prompted him to leave for Munich, where he studied at the Royal Academy before resuming work in Saint Gaudens's New York studio.
MacMonnies returned to Paris in 1886 and completed his training at the prestigious Ecole des Beaux-Arts, studying under French sculptor Alexandre Falguière (1831–1900). His works first appeared in the annual Salon exhibitions in Paris in 1889. Thereafter MacMonnies's career flourished. His bronze statue of American Revolutionary hero Nathan Hale (1755-1776) for a New York City park won a medal at the Salon in 1891, and he was awarded a commission for the most important sculptural work at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago: the monumental, multifigural Triumph of Columbia. The controversy over his exuberant nude sculpture Bacchante and Infant Faun, commissioned for the courtyard of the new Boston Public Library building but rejected as decadent, served to increase the artist's notoriety. He received numerous private and public commissions over the next three decades.
In 1888 MacMonnies married a fellow American art student in Paris, painter Mary Fairchild, with whom he shared a studio. In 1890 the couple began spending time in the rural Normandy village of Giverny, a burgeoning artist's colony, and in 1898 they moved there, purchasing an old priory with a walled garden where they soon welcomed many visiting artists. Briefly, around the turn of the century, MacMonnies temporarily abandoned sculpture for painting, producing numerous portraits. As both a painter and a sculptor, the charismatic MacMonnies was a highly successful and popular teacher, especially among young American women who traveled to Paris and to Giverny for study. His successive romantic involvements with several of them, combined with long absences from his family while he traveled for commissions or worked in his Paris studio, contributed to the MacMonnieses' divorce in 1908. Frederick married Alice Jones, one of his American students, in 1910.
MacMonnies remained based in France until the outbreak of World War I, when he established a studio in New York. Celebrated on his return to his native country, he soon found himself sidelined as his traditional style and approach became outmoded.
MacMonnies returned to Paris in 1886 and completed his training at the prestigious Ecole des Beaux-Arts, studying under French sculptor Alexandre Falguière (1831–1900). His works first appeared in the annual Salon exhibitions in Paris in 1889. Thereafter MacMonnies's career flourished. His bronze statue of American Revolutionary hero Nathan Hale (1755-1776) for a New York City park won a medal at the Salon in 1891, and he was awarded a commission for the most important sculptural work at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago: the monumental, multifigural Triumph of Columbia. The controversy over his exuberant nude sculpture Bacchante and Infant Faun, commissioned for the courtyard of the new Boston Public Library building but rejected as decadent, served to increase the artist's notoriety. He received numerous private and public commissions over the next three decades.
In 1888 MacMonnies married a fellow American art student in Paris, painter Mary Fairchild, with whom he shared a studio. In 1890 the couple began spending time in the rural Normandy village of Giverny, a burgeoning artist's colony, and in 1898 they moved there, purchasing an old priory with a walled garden where they soon welcomed many visiting artists. Briefly, around the turn of the century, MacMonnies temporarily abandoned sculpture for painting, producing numerous portraits. As both a painter and a sculptor, the charismatic MacMonnies was a highly successful and popular teacher, especially among young American women who traveled to Paris and to Giverny for study. His successive romantic involvements with several of them, combined with long absences from his family while he traveled for commissions or worked in his Paris studio, contributed to the MacMonnieses' divorce in 1908. Frederick married Alice Jones, one of his American students, in 1910.
MacMonnies remained based in France until the outbreak of World War I, when he established a studio in New York. Celebrated on his return to his native country, he soon found himself sidelined as his traditional style and approach became outmoded.