Anna Hyatt Huntington

Anna Hyatt Huntington
Anna Hyatt Huntington
Birth name	Anna Vaughn Hyatt
Born	March 10, 1876(1876-03-10) Cambridge, Massachusetts
Died	October 4, 1973(1973-10-04) (aged 97)
Nationality	American
Field	Sculpture
Training	Art Students League of New York
Influenced	Gutzon Borglum Hermon Atkins MacNeil
Awards	Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur

Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington (March 10, 1876 – October 4, 1973) was an American sculptor.

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 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.^{[citation needed]}

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.^{[citation needed]} 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.^{[citation needed]}

Legacy

Her papers are held at Syracuse University, and the Archives of American Art.

Public equestrian monuments

Huntington's most notable works are equestrian statues that are on display in major cities in the United States.

• El Cid

• Balboa Park, San Diego, California
• Buenos Aires, Argentina
• California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, California
• Hispanic Society of America, New York, New York
• Seville, Spain
• Washington, D.C.

• Joan of Arc

• California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, California
• Blois, France
• Gloucester, Massachusetts
• Joan of Arc Garden, Quebec City, Quebec
• Riverside Drive at 93rd Street, New York, New York

• José Martí, 1965, Central Park, New York, New York

• 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 sculptress 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.

• In Redding, Connecticut, 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.

• 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. At the time of its construction it was the largest statue in the world at 3,500 pounds (1,600 kg). 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 University of South Carolina's Wardlaw College at 33.99679°N 81.03052°W / 33.99679; -81.03052; cast bronze.
  • Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, New Jersey at 40°44′40.6″N 74°01′29.2″W; cast aluminum, April 1964.
  • The Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia at 36°51′21.8″N 76°17′37.0″W; 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.

• "Conquering the Wild" overlooks the Lions Bridge and Lake Maury at the Mariner's Museum Park in Newport News, Va.

Other works

Her animal sculptures, figures of both life-sized and in smaller proportions, are in museums and collections throughout the United States. 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.

Two statues by Anna Hyatt Huntington grace the entrance to Collis P. Huntington State Park in Redding and Bethel, Connecticut. One statue shows a mother bear with her cubs and the other statue shows two wolves howling. The park was donated to the state of Connecticut by Anna Hyatt Huntington and Archer M. Huntington. 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.

Photo gallery

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

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  José Martí, Central Park, New York City
  

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

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

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

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  Mother Bear and Cubs, at Earthplace, Westport, Connecticut
  

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  Mother Bear and Cubs

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

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  Sybil Ludington, 1961, Lake Carmel, New York

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

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  Sculpture of Wolves

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  Cid Campeador, a monument to El Cid unveiled in Buenos Aires in 1935

See also

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

Sources

• 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

• Anna Hyatt Huntington at Find a Grave
• Anna Hyatt Huntington Papers at Syracuse University
• Oral history interview with Anna Hyatt-Huntington, (ca. 1964)