Artists Affiliated with Giverny

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: 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: 1896

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

Object number: 1992.46

Text Entries: Here the sculptor-turned-painter wears a pink tie and stands before his favorite tapestry from his extensive collection, probably the Enlevement d'Iphengene, which hung in his Giverny studio. MacMonnies' brush proudly gestures to himself as does Velásquez's in Las Meninas. In both this self portrait and The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Self Portrait, MacMonnies holds his brush in his left hand. Frederick MacMonnies in His Studio by Ellen Emment Rand depicts him painting with his right hand, which is the actual case.

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]

Frederick MacMonnies

Date: 1904

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

Object number: 1999.88

Text Entries: Regally arrayed in white lace with a feathered chapeau, Mabel Conkling (1871-1966) stands in front of the extraordinary blue-green tapestries found in MacMonnies' Giverny studio. Conkling and her husband David Paul Conkling (1871-1926) were students of the sculptor-turned-artist and were frequent guests at Le Moutier. Presumably commissioned by the couple, since it remained in the Conkling family, the painting required fourteen sittings for completion-an implication of MacMonnies' desire for perfection in his art. Despite family legend that the portrait was painted in MacMonnies' New York studio in Macdougal Alley, Greenwich Village, records show that the portrait was painted in July and August of 1904 in Giverny.

Frederick MacMonnies

Date: c. 1896–1897

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

Object number: 1999.90

Text Entries: In 1885 former public school teacher Mary Fairchild left St. Louis, were she and her fellow female art students had successfully campaigned for access to the nude model, to study art in Paris on a scholarship; she would remain there for twenty-five years. She launched a highly successful career as a painter, participating in Salon exhibitions and producing both monumental public works (such as a mural for the Women's Building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition) and intimate glimpses of her unconventional domestic life, such as these two paintings of her daughter Bertha. The converted monastery that MacMonnies shared as a home and studio with her husband, the sculptor and painter Frederick MacMonnies, became a social center for American artists and students in Giverny.

Frederick MacMonnies

Date: c. 1896–1897

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

Object number: 1999.91

Text Entries: In 1885 former public school teacher Mary Fairchild left St. Louis, where she and her fellow female art students had successfully campaigned for access to the nude model, to study art in Paris on a scholarship; she would remain there for twenty-five years. She launched a highly successful career as a painter, participating in Salon exhibitions and producing both monumental public works (such as a mural for the Women's Building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition) and intimate glimpses of her unconventional domestic life, such as these two paintings of her daughter Bertha. The converted monastery that MacMonnies shared as a home and studio with her husband, the sculptor and painter Frederick MacMonnies, became a social center for American artists and students in Giverny.