From Miniatures to Monuments: The Legacy of Anna Hyatt

Huntington

By Kerry Longbottom

Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington (1876-1973) is a highly unusual

artist in the history of American women sculptors. Over the

course of her 70 year long career she enjoyed a level of

popularity almost unheard of for women artists in the early 20th

century. Born in 1876, Anna Hyatt belonged to the generation of

women artists who had fought their way into art schools only to

find that their academic training did not bring the same promise

of professional recognition that it held for men, and yet she was

able to navigate around this obstacle and become one of the most

commercially successful American sculptors of all time.

Primarily known for her small-scale sculptures of wild animals,

Hyatt was also successful as a sculptor of large-scale public

monuments, which were widely acclaimed by both critics and public

audiences. This paper will address the strategies Anna Hyatt

employed in order to maintain her career as a woman sculptor of

both miniatures and monuments and how these strategies changed

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after her marriage, arguing that the domestic display of

miniatures allowed her to overcome stigmas of female labor and

her later creation of monumental sculptures depended on her

participation in her husband’s philanthropic ventures.

Like many women artists, Anna Hyatt’s initial interest in

art was shaped by her family. Her mother and both of her

grandmothers had received as much formal art training as was

available to them in their day, and her mother, Audella Beebe

Hyatt, had even been a well-received painter before marrying Anna

Hyatt’s father.1 Anna had initially focused her studies on

playing the violin, while her older sister Harriet studied

sculpture with Henry Hudson Kitson in Boston.2 Although it is

often reported that Kitson became Anna’s first teacher, she

stated in an interview that “I was in his studio once or twice…

but I never had any criticism from him,” and that it was really

from Harriet that she first learned to sculpt.3

Alpheus Hyatt, Anna’s father, was a distinguished

1Anne Higonnet, “Wild at Heart: Rediscovering the Sculpture of Hyatt Huntington,” Magazine Antiques 181, no. 1 (2014): 175; Lisa Pasachnik, “Capturingthe Wild: Anna Vaughn Hyatt, Sculptor,” Style 1900 13, no. 4 (2000):57. 2 Oral History Interview with Anna Hyatt-Huntington, circa 1964, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.3 Interview.

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paleontologist and zoologist who taught at Massachusetts

Institute of Technology, and Anna often accompanied him on trips

to the zoo to study animals.4 In addition to helping familiarize

Anna with a variety of animals at a young age, it seems that

Alpheus also taught her his scientific methods of observation.5

Her nephew, A. Hyatt Mayor, later noted that “looking

tremendously closely at something rubbed off as a family

characteristic.”6 Under her father’s influence, Anna Hyatt

developed a strong understanding of the ways animals moved and

how these movements were determined by their anatomy, an

understanding that would later be vital to her success as a

sculptor.7

It was because of Anna Hyatt’s passion for studying animals

that her sister Harriet first persuaded her to enter sculpture.

According to Anna, “[s]he wanted to do a group which combined a

boy and an animal and she said, ‘I can’t do animals; I don’t know

anything about them and you’ve studied animals ever since you

4 Higonnet, “Wild at Heart,” 175.5 Myrna G. Eden, Energy and Individuality in the Art of Anna Huntington, Sculptor and Amy Beach, Composer (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1987), 14.6 Eden, Energy and Individuality, 14.7 Eden, Energy and Individuality, 14.

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were knee-high to a grasshopper.’”8 This collaboration with her

sister was realized as a composition of a boy and a dog, called

The Pride of Our Great Dane, with Anna modeling the dog after a family

pet.9 The sculpture was well-received by critics, and was

exhibited and sold at the National Sculpture Society in New York

in 1898.10 From then on Anna Hyatt endeavored to become a

professional sculptor, a task she accomplished with remarkable

success.

Her commercial breakthrough came at the turn of the century

in Boston, when Thomas Lawson of the Shreve, Crump & Low Company

saw some of her early bronze statuettes at an exhibition and told

her that he “wanted everything [she] could produce.”11 Lawson

was instrumental to the establishment of her professional career,

as it was through Shreve, Crump & Low that her early works were

cast and sold.12 Around the year 1900, when Anna Hyatt was 24,

she moved to New York and partnered with Gorham & Company, and

through their efforts to promote her works through catalogues and

exhibitions she was fully able to support herself from her 8 Interview.9 Pasachnik, “Capturing the Wild,” 58; Eden, Energy and Individuality, 16.10 Pasachnik, “Capturing the Wild,” 58; Eden, Energy and Individuality, 16.11 Interview.12 Interview.

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sculpture income.13 In fact, her miniatures sold so well that in

1912 she was reported to be one of the highest-earning

professional women in the United States.14

It was a remarkable achievement for such a young woman to be

able to support herself with her artwork, and she later recalled

that this was even more so given that animal sculpture was a

highly competitive market in New York when she arrived there.15

Despite the possible setbacks of this competition, however, Anna

Hyatt’s branch of sculpture offered some unique possibilities for

a professional woman in the art world. Miniatures had surged in

popularity at the beginning of the 20th century due to their

affordability and the ease with which they could be displayed in

private homes; as a result it was rare for Anna Hyatt to sell any

statues that were larger than 40 inches tall.16 Even her most

prestigious early client, the Metropolitan Museum, chose to

purchase three different works that were all smaller than one

foot high.17 This craze for small-scale works offered the 13 Interview.14 Deborah Cullen, ed., Goddess, Heroine, Beast: Anna Hyatt Huntington’s New York Sculpture, 1902-1936 (New York: The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University in the City of New York, 2014), 11-12.15 Interview. 16 Cullen, Goddess, Heroine, Beast, 12.17 Cullen, Goddess, Heroine, Beast, 12.

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distinct advantage that it avoided any conflicts with notions of

femininity.

Miniatures did not require the same physical labor as life-

size statues, and because she had no need of human models she did

not run the risk of being seen as transgressive in her studio

practices. They were also cast in bronze rather than sculpted in

stone, meaning that once Anna Hyatt had made the clay model for a

statue she could have it shipped to the foundry and reproduced,

in some cases hundreds of times, without any additional physical

effort.18 Because these small statues were primarily displayed

in homes, they also carried with them connotations of

domesticity, underscored by the fact that many of Hyatt’s works

were adapted into functional domestic objects, such as letter-

openers and bookends.19 The fact that Anna Hyatt built her

professional reputation on miniatures of animals also meant that

she was dealing with universally acceptable subject matter, even

though many of her compositions showed the violence of the

natural world.

Throughout the early phase of her career, Anna Hyatt’s

18 Cullen, Goddess, Heroine, Beast, 12.19 Cullen, Goddess, Heroine, Beast, 12.

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partnership with fine metal companies like Shreve, Crump & Low

and Gorham & Company had the added benefit that she could simply

produce works in the privacy of her studio then send them to the

company to sell on her behalf.20 She did not need to solicit

commissions or cultivate patrons- endeavors that could easily be

seen as overly aggressive or ambitious for a woman- and instead

could maintain a high level of privacy about her working habits,

projecting the ideal of feminine modesty by her lack of a public

persona. In fact, she was so private that despite Archer

Huntington’s interest in Anna Hyatt’s career, it was not until

the two met to discuss a medal commission for the Hispanic

Society that they realized they had been seeing each other on the

same train into town for weeks.21

While she was not an openly public figure, Anna Hyatt was

keenly aware of the necessity of exhibiting at the Paris Salon in

order to build a reputation as a professional artist, so between

1906 and 1910 she made trips to France for several extended

sojourns.22 She was accompanied on these trips by her sister

20 Cullen, Goddess, Heroine, Beast, 12.21 Mary Mitchell and Albert Goodrich, The Remarkable Huntingtons, Archer and Anna: Chronicle of a Marriage (Newtown, CT: Budd Drive Press, 2004), 17.22 Cullen, Goddess, Heroine, Beast, 15.

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Harriet and her sister’s children, and Anna’s nephew A. Hyatt

Mayor described the process by which the two women searched for a

place for Anna to work:

[Aunt Anna] wanted a summer studio which would be cheap and on the ground floor so you could wheel in heavy sculpture. So she and my mother took a train to the end of the line. Every time the trained slowed down they looked out and they would see, you know, those silvered globes in the gardens. They would see a factory roof. Finally the train slowed down to a little village where roses were growing over the garden walls and thatches. Beyond there were bachelor buttons and poppies in the field. It was just beautiful. So they got out. And they asked the chef de gare if he had anykind of barracks or shed that would serve as a studio. And he said, “Mesdames, nous n’avons que des ateliers.” They had landedin Auvers-sur-Oise where Van Gogh shot himself, where Pisarro painted, where Cézanne painted. And they hired the studio of Daubigny whose backyard had been painted by Van Gogh.23

It was in this historic yet appropriately domestic setting that

Anna Hyatt began work on the pieces she would submit to the Paris

Salon, and ultimately where she would undertake the sculpture

that would lead to her first monumental commission.24

While she was in France in 1909, the Catholic Church issued

a decree of beatification for Joan of Arc, sparking an immense

surge of interest in the saint in both France and in the United

23 A. Hyatt Mayor and Paul Cummings, “An Interview with A. Hyatt Mayor,” Archives of American Art Journal 18, no. 4 (1978): 2.24 Cullen, Goddess, Heroine, Beast, 15.

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States.25 Having read Mark Twain’s Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc,

published in 1896, Anna was finally inspired by Joan’s

beatification to sculpt the saint.26 She later told an

interviewer that “[e]very French sculptor has done his Joan of

Arc, and is sure to, so that she’d been done in light of every

imaginable form as far as I could see. And my challenge was to

get a composition that was original, that hadn’t really been done

before. That was the fun of it.”27

With her characteristic enthusiasm, she began conducting

research on Joan in Rouen, then went to work on a life-size

equestrian statue of the heroine in her studio in Auvers-sur-Oise

to be exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1910.28 This statue caused

quite a stir at the Salon, garnering much attention in French

newspapers and earning her an honorable mention from the Salon

jury.29 The jury claimed that the only reason they did not award

her the medal of honor is because it was impossible for a woman

to make such a large statue on her own, to which one critic

responded that “[e]veryone knew that that was only an excuse for 25 Pasachnik, “Capturing the Wild,” 60.26 Interview.27 Interview.28 Pasachnik, “Capturing the Wild,” 60; Interview. 29 Pasachnik, “Capturing the Wild,” 60.

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not giving the medal to a woman, particularly a woman who was not

a native to France.”30

Meanwhile, back in New York the renewed interest in Joan of

Arc had prompted the creation of a Joan of Arc monument

committee, with the purpose of raising funds for a statue of the

saint in honor of her 500th birthday in 1912.31 The committee had

the additional goal of fostering friendship between France and

the United States, a goal that became all the more urgent on the

eve of World War I.32 The leader of the committee was J. Sanford

Saltus, an executive at Tiffany & Company, who was traveling

throughout Europe looking for the perfect Joan to bring back to

New York.33 He saw Anna Hyatt’s Joan of Arc at the Paris Salon and

recommended her to the committee, who interviewed her after she

returned to the United States in 1911 and asked her if she would

recreate her Joan for New York’s Riverside Drive.34 This would not

only be New York’s first statue of a historical woman, but the

first public statue in New York to be sculpted by a woman (Fig. 30 Pasachnik, “Capturing the Wild,” 60.31 Eleanor Tufts, American Women Artists, 1830-1930 (Washington, DC: International Exhibitions Foundation for the National Museum of Women in the Arts, 1987), 247.32 Higonnet, “Wild at Heart,” 177.33 Cullen, Goddess, Heroine, Beast, 16; Interview.34 Higonnet, “Wild at Heart,” 177; Interview.

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1).35

With such a high profile commission, Anna Hyatt had to

carefully manage her reputation through every step of the

creation process. Her usual strategy of minimizing the

appearance of her labor had worked well to sell her miniatures

but had cost her the medal of honor at the Paris Salon, so she

adopted a new way of presenting herself to safeguard her

credibility. The New York version of Joan of Arc would be made

“life and a quarter” size, emphatically erasing any remaining

doubts as to whether or not she had been physically capable of

producing the original, life-size Joan on her own.36 Anna Hyatt’s

increasing consciousness of her projected public image is

reflected in the portrait (Fig. 2) produced by her friend,

painter Marion Boyd Allen, in 1915:

Adamant that her portraits fulfill their purpose as faithfullikenesses, Allen captured Hyatt in action, allowing the sculptor to work shaping her clay model during their session. Thus Hyatt assumed a customary pose, one foot resting on the stand that holds her model. She holds her wire loop in one hand, and manipulates the clay with her other, raptly absorbed in her creative process. Allen laterremembered that Hyatt had asked her to repaint the arms in

35 Higonnet, “Wild at Heart,” 177.36 Interview.

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this portrait to display her actual muscular strength.37

Anna Hyatt also emphasized the intellectual labor that went

into the creation of the Joan of Arc. Anna told many stories about

how she spent a great deal of time before the completion of the

first Joan searching for an appropriate horse to carry her

heroine into battle, as she needed one that was massive yet

energetic.38 In Paris, she persuaded the Magasin de Beaux Arts

to let her into their stables so she might sketch their delivery

horses while an assistant trotted them up and down for her.39

According to Anna Hyatt, the store was quite proud of the fine

horses they had and “finally they sent a very handsome horse to

[her] studio,” which was large enough that she could actually

bring the horse inside to study it in great detail.40 This study

enabled her to closely capture the anatomy of the horse,

increasing the level of credibility the statue committee hoped

she would achieve.

The armor was another important intellectual component of

the Joan of Arc. “Everyone from the committee’s official historian 37 Erica Hirshler, A Studio of Her Own: Women Artists in Boston 1870-1940 (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 2001), 117.38 Cullen, Goddess, Heroine, Beast, 15.39 Interview.40 Interview.

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to the most casual critics said that the historical accuracy of

Joan’s armor was essential to the sculpture’s significance,” and

Bashford Dean, the legendary curator and founder of the

Metropolitan’s Arms and Armor department, was credited with

providing the research that was so vital the project.41 It has

only recently been revealed that this was almost entirely untrue,

as it was a group of committee members, not Anna Hyatt, who had

sought Dean’s advice, and Dean delegated most of the actual

research to an assistant.42 It has also recently been observed

that consultation with Dean would not have helped improve the

armor’s accuracy much, owing to the fact that his writings about

15th century armor were based as much on his own imagination as

much as they were on actual evidence.43 Whatever his

contributions may have been, the changes in the armor between the

1910 and 1915 versions of Joan of Arc were minimal, but Anna Hyatt

never attempted to diminish Dean’s role in the project.44

Rather, it seems she saw the benefits of having her statue

connected to the legendary Dean, an association that would have

41 Cullen, Goddess, Heroine, Beast, 16.42 Cullen, Goddess, Heroine, Beast, 16.43 Cullen, Goddess, Heroine, Beast, 16.44 Higonnet, “Wild at Heart,” 178.

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added to the intellectual weight of the monument.45

When Joan of Arc was finally unveiled in December 1915, it

could not have been a greater success. The statue was so popular

that four additional full-sized castings were made and placed in

Blois, France; Gloucester, Massachusetts; the Plains of Abraham

in Quebec; and the California Palace of the Legion of Honor;

additionally, numerous copies of the middle-sized statues (about

50 inches tall) she had made as preliminary models were cast and

sold to private collectors.46 Male and female critics alike

found the Joan of Arc to be a superb monument, but the terms of

their praise revealed a great divide in the way Anna Hyatt was

perceived, and thus the great skill she had at negotiating her

reputation with the expectations of various audiences. Exemplary

of these viewpoints are the reviews by Charles Caffin and Grace

Humphries, both published within six months of the statue’s

unveiling.

Caffin’s review, titled “Miss Hyatt’s Statue of Joan of

Arc,” is littered with evidence of his assumptions about women’s

artistic abilities. His choice to refer to the artist as “Miss

45 Higonnet, “Wild at Heart,” 178.46 Tufts, American Women Artists, 247.

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Hyatt” is a rather telling precursor to the rest of the piece, as

he begins by somewhat discrediting her achievements. According

to Caffin, Anna Hyatt had escaped “[m]any of the difficulties

that usually confront the sculptor of an equestrian statue in

this country” because the Joan of Arc statue committee had not

been concerned with the accuracy of Joan’s appearance or costume

as would be the case with a memorial to a modern general.47

Caffin’s telling clearly ignores the great lengths to which the

committee had gone in order to gain Bashford Dean’s approval of

Joan’s armor, and simply mentions it as something “interesting to

note.”48 Even though he credits Anna Hyatt with “creating one of

the few really monumental, impressive, and expressive equestrian

statues of modern times,” he downplays her achievement in being

the first woman to produce a public monument for New York by

remarking that he could “recall no other instance of a woman

sculptor being [e]ntrusted with a commission so important.”49

Caffin also uses highly gendered terms to describe the

figures in the piece. The horse Joan rides is characterized by

47 Charles Caffin, “Miss Hyatt’s Statue of Joan of Arc,” The Century 92, no. 2 (1915): 309.48 Caffin, “Miss Hyatt’s Statue,” 311.49 Caffin, “Miss Hyatt’s Statue,” 309.

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“vigorous movement” which simulates “the rise of a wave to its

crest” and “serves as a foundation of magnificent physical power

to the frail, slender figure” of Joan, who pose is likened to

“some frail tendril growth toward the light.”50 Caffin explains

Hyatt’s ability to capture both of these figures with such skill

as being the result of her sympathies with both the horse and

Joan’s spiritual qualities, in addition to her natural “womanly

intuition of the Maid’s character.”51

Grace Humphries takes a markedly different approach in her

piece, titled “Anna Vaughn Hyatt’s Statue.” Humphries is keenly

aware of the historical significance of this commission having

been given to a woman, and works to heighten the monumentality of

this achievement by describing the statue committee’s selection

process in great detail. Before even mentioning Anna Hyatt’s

name, Humphries narrates the painstaking process by which the

committee went about selecting the perfect design for the statue:

“[t]wo years were spent in seeing statues and designs, paintings

and drawings, in looking up all matters relating to the maid,”

and despite many suggestions to the contrary, the committee held

50 Caffin, “Miss Hyatt’s Statue,” 309-310.51 Caffin, “Miss Hyatt’s Statue,” 309-310.

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firmly to their decision that “the designs were to be considered

absolutely on their merit” without regards to the gender or

nationality of the artists submitting them.52 Humphries also

emphasizes the scholarly work that went into the design of the

statue, noting that in the absence of a complete suit of armor

from the 15th century, “the details were supplied to Miss Hyatt

from drawings only- rubbings of old tombs, old paintings, figures

in stone and bronze were studied” to ensure the accuracy of

Joan’s armor, and the result was that the finished product was

absolutely convincing to all who saw it.53

All of this discussion of the process in planning the Joan of

Arc builds to Humphries’ final discussion of the true significance

of Anna Hyatt’s statue:

The unveiling of the statue is not only a triumph for the sculptor. It is of great importance to women. For it is the first and only heroic equestrian statue ever created by a woman. Coming near, as it assuredly does, to being the greatest equestrian statue in America, Miss Hyatt’s success is an opening wedge for women in this field of work. Frequently, sculptors of talent and ability have been refused important commissions, merely for the fact that theyare women. Gradually opinion changes and when, in the future, great pieces of sculpture are competed for by women,

52 Grace Humphries, “Anna Vaughn Hyatt’s Statue,” The International Studio LVII, no. 226 (1915): XLVII-XLVIII.53 Humphries, “Anna Vaughn Hyatt’s Statue,” L.

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and successfully, Miss Hyatt will be recognized as the pioneer, the blazer of the trail. But it is to be kept in mind that her Jeanne D’Arc won the coveted commission judgedby an absolute standard.54

Humphries also differs from Caffin in avoiding gendered

language to describe the statue, choosing to refer to the figure

of Joan as “dignified” rather than slender or frail, and she also

gives Anna Hyatt a great deal more autonomy in the design by

including the artist’s own words in the piece.55 She quotes Anna

Hyatt saying of the original statue that enlarging it was “a

terribly brutal piece of work; massing on three and a half tons

of clay does entail great physical labor.”56 She again quotes

Hyatt discussing the way she chose to depict Joan, wanting to

show that it was “only her mental attitude, only her religious

fervour, that could have enabled her to endure so much

physically.”57 Humphries’ goal is clear: by extolling Anna

Hyatt’s great achievement and capability as a sculptor of

monuments, she hoped to prove that all women could rise to the

same task if given the right chance.

54 Humphries, “Anna Vaughn Hyatt’s Statue,” L.55 Humphries, “Anna Vaughn Hyatt’s Statue,” XLVIII.56 Humphries, “Anna Vaughn Hyatt’s Statue,” XLVIII.57 Humprhies, “Anna Vaughn Hyatt’s Statue,” XLVIII.

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Despite the popularity and critical success of the Joan of Arc,

Anna Hyatt would not produce another public monument until nearly

twelve years later, after her marriage to Archer Huntington.

Their marriage initiated a new phase in Anna’s career, as

Archer’s combined devotion to the arts and philanthropic ventures

allowed her new opportunities and freedoms to create large-scale

works as complements to these ventures. The status of these

works as philanthropic gifts removed the pressure for Anna to

prove herself, as well as removing the risk of commercial failure

if her works did not meet public starts of feminine artistic

propriety.

Archer Huntington’s stepfather was the industrial tycoon

Collis Huntington, and his mother Arabella was one of the most

important art collectors in New York.58 With the combined

business acumen and artistic sensibilities he was taught by his

parents, Archer “became a dominant player in America’s cultural

development in the first half of the twentieth century.”59 When

he met Anna Hyatt in 1921, Archer had already established his

58 Linda Brazeau, “‘The Visionaries’: Archer and Anna Hyatt Huntington- Patrons of American Sculpture,” PhD diss., The City University of New York, 2002: 12.59 Brazeau, “‘The Visionaries,’” 60.

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famous Audubon Terrace, a complex of institutions that included

the Hispanic Society’s museum and library, the American

Numismatic Society, the American Geographical Society, and the

Museum of the American Indian.60 As mentioned above, he had

asked Anna Hyatt to create a medal for the Hispanic Society in

1921, during which time she wrote that it was “an unusual

stimulus to work for one whose gifts and taste promise the

keenest judgment and appreciation.”61 As might be expected for

two of New York’s cultural giants, after this initial meeting the

two quickly grew fond of each other.62

Like much of the rest of Anna Hyatt’s early career, her

wedding with Archer Huntington was a decidedly private affair.

Held in Anna’s studio on March 10, 1923, it was attended only by

a small group of close relatives and friends.63 Their wedding

date was also on the day they happened to share a birthday, when

Anna turned 47 and Archer turned 54.64 Anna and Archer

Huntington would remain happily married until Archer’s death in

1955. Thanks in part to his support of professional women and 60 Brazeau, “‘The Visionaries,’” 68, 74-75, 77-78.61 Brazeau, “‘The Visionaries,’” 106.62 Mitchell and Goodrich, The Remarkable Huntingtons, 17-18.63 Mitchell and Goodrich, The Remarkable Huntingtons, 19.64 Mitchell and Goodrich, The Remarkable Huntingtons, 13.

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his abundant wealth, the only hindrance to Anna’s career after

their marriage was a case of tuberculosis that she contracted in

1927, which would periodically restrict her ability to work

throughout the rest of her life.65

Upon returning from their honeymoon, Archer and Anna decided

to embark on their first project together: Anna was going to

create a statue of El Cid Campeador, the famous Spanish war hero

of the 11th century, which the couple would present as a gift to

Spain at the International Exposition in the spring of 1929.66

El Cid was a special figure for Archer, as just prior to their

marriage he had completed a ten-year-long project to translate an

epic poem about the life of El Cid from Castilian into English,

an achievement for which he was granted honorary degrees by Yale,

Harvard, and Columbia universities.67 Once Anna had read his

translation and “saw what a magnificent figure it was to do,” she

immediately decided that El Cid would be the most fitting subject

for a statue with which to express Archer’s gratitude to Spain

for having given him such a rich focus for his life.68

65 Interview; Mitchell and Goodrich, The Remarkable Huntingtons, 22-23.66 Mitchell and Goodrich, The Remarkable Huntingtons, 21.67 Mitchell and Goodrich, The Remarkable Huntingtons, 22.68 Interview; Mitchell and Goodrich, The Remarkable Huntingtons, 21.

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Having already proven herself capable of executing an

equestrian statue on a larger-than-life scale, and being

commissioned for the adornment of a public cultural institution,

Anna Hyatt Huntington’s El Cid was received with great enthusiasm

by the public, and critics never questioned the propriety of a

woman sculpting such a dynamic monument (Fig. 3). Some even

suggested that it was a better work than the Joan of Arc: the critic

Parks Kineton noted in 1934 that “her monument to ‘The Cid’ was

truly monumental,” in contrast to the Joan of Arc, which was “truly

decorative.”69 After the first casting of El Cid was installed in

Seville, Spain, a second was placed in the courtyard of the

Hispanic Society, and Anna Hyatt Huntington went to work on four

large warrior figures and the bases of two flagpoles to accompany

the Hispanic Society’s El Cid.70

From this point onward the pair always worked together on

philanthropic pursuits, and Anna was free to contribute

monumental sculptures to these projects as she wished, having no

further need to wait for commissions before designing large-scale

compositions. One of their most famous projects was the founding

69 Kineton, “American Sculptress of Animals,” 65.70 Mitchell and Goodrich, The Remarkable Huntingtons, 29-30.

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of Brookgreen Gardens in South Carolina, America’s first public

sculpture garden.71 The garden’s first sculptural inhabitants

were pieces that Anna donated to the project, but as the

Depression years progressed the couple decided to focus on

supporting struggling artists by purchasing their work instead.72

At the same time that they were working on Brookgreen Gardens,

the Huntingtons also founded the Mariners’ Museum in Newport

News, Virginia, in honor of the shipyard that Collis P.

Huntington had established in the city.73 This museum was

located on a 1,000 acre park, which in contrast to Brookgreen

only featured three sculptures: two lions to decorate the bridge,

and a monument to Collis alternately referred to as Youth Taming

the Wild or Conquering the Wild, erected in 1934 (Fig. 4).74

While there is not much written record about the statue, it

is clear from a visual comparison to El Cid that Anna’s artistic

expression had undergone a significant transformation in the

seven years that had passed between the completion of these two

pieces. Anna had always portrayed her subjects in motion, but 71 Robin R. Salmon, “The Huntingtons: A Legacy of Giving,” Sculpture Review 54, no. 1 (2005): 17.72 Salmon, “A Legacy of Giving,” 18.73 Salmon, “A Legacy of Giving,” 16.74 Mitchell and Goodrich, The Remarkable Huntingtons, 88.

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now she was able to experiment with a bold and expressive

dynamism verging on abstraction.75 The same year that Youth Taming

the Wild was erected, a critic remarked that although “Anna Hyatt

Huntington is a good and vigorous artist in her own right; of

late her work appears to have lost some of its sincere directness

in a search for some mystic expression, which true lovers of art

deplore.”76 Anna Hyatt Huntington, however, had grown confident

enough from the support of her husband that she no longer

depended on the approval of such critics.

At the time of her death in 1973, Anna Hyatt Huntington left

behind a legacy that few women in the 20th century could have

hoped for. At a surprisingly young age she had become the most

successful woman artist of her time, and despite her marriage and

the advent of Modernism she remained an enormously popular artist

throughout the rest of her career. Using the domestic

connotations of miniatures and the philanthropic potential of

large-scale sculpture to her advantage, Anna Hyatt Huntington had

the extraordinary ability to command the art market and public

75 Robin R. Salmon, “Man and Horse in the Work of Anna Hyatt Huntington: Two Examples.” Sculpture Review 55, no. 2 (2006): 26.76 Jeanne d’Ucel, Review of Le Musicisme Sculptural, by Jean Royere, Books Abroad 8, no. 4 (1934): 427.

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opinion before becoming independent of those forces, making her

free to become a master of both miniatures and monuments.

Illustrations

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Figure 1. Anna Vaughn Hyatt. Joan of Arc, 1915. Bronze, Mohegan granite; 20 ft. 4 in. x 6 ft. 1 in. x 12 ft. 3 in. Riverside Parkat 93rd Street. Collection of the City of New York.

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Figure 2. Marion Boyd Allen. Portrait of Anna Vaughn Hyatt, 1915. Oil on canvas; 65 x 40 in. Collection Maier Museum of Art at RandolphCollege, Lynchburg, VA.

Figure 3. Anna Hyatt Huntington. El Cid, 1927. Bronze; 12 2/3 ft. Seville, Spain.

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Figure 4. Anna Hyatt Huntington. Conquering the Wild, 1934. Limestone; 13 1/3 ft. Mariners’ Museum Park, Newport News, VA.

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Bibliography

Brazeau, Linda. “‘The Visionaries’: Archer and Anna Hyatt Huntington- Patrons of American Sculpture.” PhD diss., The City University of New York, 2002.

Caffin, Charles H. “Miss Hyatt’s Statue of Joan of Arc.” The Century 92, no. 2 (1915): 309-311.

Cullen, Deborah, ed. Goddess, Heroine, Beast: Anna Hyatt Huntington’s New York Sculpture, 1902-1936. New York: The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University in the City of New York, 2014.

D’Ucel, Jeanne. Review of Le Musicisme Sculptural, by Jean Royere. Books Abroad 8, no. 4 (1934): 427.

Eden, Myrna G. Energy and Individuality in the Art of Anna Huntington, Sculptor and Amy Beach, Composer. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1987.

Higonnet, Anne. “Wild at Heart: Rediscovering the Sculpture of Hyatt Huntington.” Magazine Antiques 181, no. 1 (2014): 174-181.

Hill, May Brawley. The Woman Sculptor: Malvina Hoffman and Her Contemporaries. New York: Berry-Hill Galleries, 1984.

Huntington, Anna Hyatt. Anna Hyatt Huntington. New York: W.W. Norton, 1947.

Humphries, Grace. “Anna Vaughn Hyatt’s Statue.” The International Studio LVII, no. 226 (1915): XLVII– L.

Kineton, Parks. “American Sculptress of Animals: Anna Hyatt Huntington.” Apollo 16 (1932): 61-66.

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Mayor, A. Hyatt, and Paul Cummings. “An Interview with A. Hyatt Mayor.” Archives of American Art Journal 18, no. 4 (1978): 2-19.

Mitchell, Mary, and Albert Goodrich. The Remarkable Huntingtons, Archer and Anna: Chronicle of a Marriage. Newtown, CT: Budd Drive Press, 2004.

Oral History Interview with Anna Hyatt-Huntington, circa 1964. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Pasachnik, Lisa. “Capturing the Wild: Anna Vaughn Hyatt, Sculptor.” Style 1900 13, no. 4 (2000: 56-61).

Salmon, Robin R. “The Huntingtons: A Legacy of Giving.” Sculpture Review 54, no. 1 (2005: 16-21).

________. “Man and Horse in the Work of Anna Hyatt Huntington: Two Examples.” Sculpture Review 55, no. 2 (2006: 26-29).

Tufts, Eleanor. American Women Artists, 1830-1930. Washington, DC: International Exhibitions Foundation for the National Museumof Women in the Arts, 1987.

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