Dated Web objects 1880-1919

Frederick MacMonnies

Date: 1890

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1988.9

Text Entries: Gerdts, William H. et al. <i>Lasting Impressions: American Painters in France, 1865–1915</i>. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1992. Text pp. 61–62; fig. 57, p. 62 (black & white). [specific reference to Terra sculpture]<br><br> Gerdts, William H. et al. <i>Impressions de toujours: les peintres américains en France, 1865–1915</i>. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1992. Text pp. 61–62; fig. 57, p. 62 (black & white). [specific reference to Terra sculpture]<br><br> <i>Nathan Hale, </i>Frederick William MacMonnies. Collection Cameo sheet, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, November 1998. Ill. (black & white). [specific reference to Terra sculpture]<br><br> Cartwright, Derrick R. <i>The Extraordinary and the Everyday: American Perspectives, 1820–1920</i>. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2001. Ill. p. 37 (color). [specific reference to Terra sculpture]<br><br> Cartwright, Derrick R. <i>L'Héroïque et le quotidian: les artistes américains, 1820–1920</i>. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2001. Ill. p. 37 (color). [specific reference to Terra sculpture]<br><br> Kennedy, Elizabeth and Sophie Lévy. <i>Faces of America: Portraits of the Terra Foundation for the Arts Collection, 1770–1940</i>. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2004. Text p. 32 (checklist); ill. p. 39 (color). [specific reference to Terra sculpture]<br><br> Kennedy, Elizabeth and Sophie Lévy. <i>Visages de l'Amérique: le portrait dans la collection de la Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1770–1940</i>. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2004. Text p. 32 (checklist); ill. p. 39 (color). [specific reference to Terra sculpture]<br><br> Lévy, Sophie, et al. <i>Twarze Ameryki: Portrety z kolekcji Terra Foundation for American Art, 1770–1940/Faces of America: Portraits from the collection of the Terra Foundation for American Art, 1770–1940</i>. (exh. cat. International Cultural Center). Cracow, Poland: International Cultural Center, 2006. Text p. 66; ill. p. 67 (color). [specific reference to Terra sculpture]

Frederick MacMonnies

Date: 1894

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1988.20

Text Entries: After the astounding success of his Columbian Fountain at the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, MacMonnies returned to Paris and exhibited the more than life-size Bacchante with Infant Faun at the Salon of 1894. The sculptor earned an exceptional honor when his work was purchased in 1897 for the Musée du Luxembourg, the Parisian museum whose collection was comprised of the works of living artists. Bacchante with Infant Faun was the first American sculpture bought by the French government. MacMonnies offered Bacchante with Infant Faun as a gift to his friend Charles F. McKim, who in turn presented it to the Boston Public Library for its courtyard. Public outrage at this bacchanalian image of drunken motherhood (a bacchante is a priestess of Bacchus the Roman god of wine and revelry) resulted in the eventual rejection of the gift. McKim then donated the piece to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1897. Unwittingly, it became one of the great public art scandals in the United States. Not surprisingly, the press coverage surrounding the work served to enhance MacMonnies' career and the popularity of the scaled-down version statuette.

Frederick MacMonnies

Date: 1894

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1988.21

Text Entries: Encouraged by his American teacher and mentor, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, MacMonnies left for Paris in 1884 to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the ultimate destination for many ambitious art students in the nineteenth century. Despite the rigorous competition to enter this French national school of fine arts, the promising young American student won a place in the teaching studio of the noted French sculptor Alexandre Falguière. MacMonnies won two Prix d'Atelier, the highest honor awarded to foreign students at the Ecole, in 1886 and 1887. After his marriage in 1888 to Mary Fairchild, MacMonnies established a joint studio in Paris with his wife. It was there that he created Diana, his first public success. MacMonnies' Diana combines a naturalistic appearance with an elegant Beaux-Arts style. The descriptive term Beaux-Arts derives from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts artists' emphasis on the decorative and the sensual. Only the crescent moon in her hair signifies the slender young woman as Diana, the goddess of the chase and the moon. Awarded an honorable mention at the Salon of 1889, the over life-size statue's beautiful form and technical sophistication, which uses the strength of bronze to balance the figure on a single foot, did much to establish the artist's reputation. MacMonnies soon discovered the market potential of "parlor bronzes," such as this small-scale reproduction of a major work. Designed for the domestic interiors of upwardly-mobile American collectors, the statuette provided a steady income for the sculptor.

Frederick MacMonnies

Date: 1894

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1989.13

Text Entries: Central to MacMonnies' professional life were collaborative projects often instituted by his great friend Stanford White of the New York architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White. In 1887, White designed the house known as "Naumkeag" for lawyer and later Ambassador Joseph A. Choate of Stockbridge, Massachusetts and commissioned MacMonnies to create a six-foot fountain figure. Completed in 1890, the garden sculpture was exhibited that year at the Paris Salon. Contemporary reviews prized the sculpture for its vitality, joyful spirit and strong picturesque modeling. In 1894 after copyrighting the image, MacMonnies had bronze reductions made for interior rather than garden use. From 1890 to 1930, fountain and garden sculpture flourished as an important new addition to the repertoire of American sculptors. Sculpture set in pools served a formal purpose as a spatial accent, but, like all features of good architecture, they also were intended to convey emotion. Their subjects were usually themes of joy, naiveté and retreat, recalling famous statues of classical antiquity and the Italian Renaissance. A prime goal was a rejuvenating experience through a controlled intermingling of nature and art. The enlivened features and light-catching surfaces of MacMonnies' figures were a significant contribution to the centuries old genre of laughing children and animals as garden subjects.

Frederick MacMonnies

Date: 1895

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1988.7

Text Entries: Designed specifically for the parlor as a decorative piece, this running winged adolescent figure is readily identified as Cupid, the Roman god of love. A favorite device of MacMonnies was to precariously balance a figure on the toes of one foot-such as his Diana, 1889, which emphasized the material strength of bronze while allowing for a fluid motion of the subject depicted. By placing his messenger of love on a globe, the artist was signifying the universality of love. The three-cornered base of Cupid on a Ball, adorned with garlands and rams' head, is supported by cloven hooves-elements drawn from a broad repertoire of classicizing decorative forms. The subtle reference to satyrs-a bawdy character from Greek antiquity frequently used as a symbol of lust-acts as a sly suggestion to the powerful effects of this whimsical god of love. Just as MacMonnies interpreted his teacher Augustus Saint-Gaudens' designs (see "Storks at Play," Eli Bates Fountain), Janet Scudder, one of his principal sculptural assistants, is associated with this statuette of Cupid.

Frederick MacMonnies

Date: 1912

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1996.94

Text Entries: Exhibition of American Sculpture Catalogue. New York: The National Sculpture Society, 1923, p. 155.<br><br> Christie's New York, New York (Sale ANNABELLE-7894, May 26, 1994): lot 35. Ill. lot 35, p. 49 (color). [specific reference to Terra sculpture]

Bessie Potter Vonnoh

Date: c. 1926

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1989.3

Text Entries: Bessie Potter Vonnoh, wife of the painter Robert Vonnoh, took up sculpture at an early age, first as a pastime as an invalid child and later, as a teenager, under the guidance of sculptor and teacher Lorado Taft at the Art Institute of Chicago. Her first commission was for a large-scale allegorical figure of Art for the Illinois State Building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. However, In Arcadia is far more typical of Vonnoh's oeuvre in that it depicts, on a comparatively small scale, classicized, youthful figures with intimacy and spontaneity rather than monumentality. In 1921 Vonnoh was the first woman sculptor to be elected a full member of the National Academy of Design.