Charging Mountain Goats bronze bookend pair by artist, Anna Hyatt Huntingon

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Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington
Charging Mountain Goats bronze bookend pair by artist, Anna Hyatt Huntingon
1925

About the Item

Anna Hyatt Huntington was arguably the finest and most important American animal sculptor of the twentieth century. With an astounding career that spanned more than seven decades, Huntington became known both nationally and internationally—monumental works in Cuba, Spain, and France—as a true artistic genius. Her talent for portraying animals in a realistic manner while also capturing their inherent nature and characteristics was unique. Huntington was fully supported in her artistic career by a family appreciative of art and learning. Anna was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1876. Her mother was an amateur painter and her father was a professor of zoology. She began formal schooling in music but realized through collaborating with her sister, an amateur sculptor of figures, that her abilities lay in sculpture. Anna spent her childhood summers on a farm in Maryland, where she gained confidence in modeling animals, especially horses. At the same time, Hyatt was exposed to numerous household pets and wild animals that she observed at the Frank C. Bostock “Grand Zoological Congress” in Boston. She also studied with the Boston-based sculptor Henry Hudson Kitson. When the artist’s sister married, their collaboration ended and Huntington found herself working independently with great success. She exhibited at Shreve, Crump and Low, a jeweler in Boston that attracted the patronage of Thomas Lawson, who bought one of every cast Huntington made. Her brother-in-law, the curator of natural science at what is now the Brooklyn Museum, arranged for a commission of casts of three extinct animals for the collection. Huntington and her mother moved to New York City permanently upon the death of her father in 1902. The artist trained at the Art Students League under Hermon Atkin MacNeil and George Barnard. Soon thereafter, she worked privately with Gutzon Borglum, a specialist in horse sculpture. As one who viewed her career as a continual learning process, the sculptress increased both her skill and her love of wildlife with a self directed study of animals at the Bronx Zoo, a source of subject matter she would consult for years. Art historian Beatrice G. Proske succinctly captured the artist’s style when she wrote of the sculptor: “She did not copy the model literally but adapted and interpreted at will in order to realize the essential form of each animal and to infuse it with the breath of life. There is extraordinary variety in her themes, for she shows her subjects singly and in groups, at rest and in motion - feeding, playing, fighting.” After Huntington’s first exhibition in 1902 at the Boston Arts Club, where she presented forty animal pieces, national recognition and many major commissions soon followed. She began exhibiting at the Society of American Artists in 1903, with a model of two horses huddled together under a blanket entitled Winter, which is now viewed as one of her greatest works. Also during this time, Huntington executed many large versions of cats that she had studied at the Bronx Zoo. While in New York, she used the Roman Bronze Works foundry, but in 1905, the artist entered into a long-term agreement with Gorham Company Founders in Providence, Rhode Island to cast and market her sculptures on a royalty basis at their Fifth Avenue venue in New York. In 1907, Huntington took her work to France. There she constructed an equestrian statue of the Maid of Orleans that won Huntington honorable mention at the Paris Salon. From this recognition, the city of New York hired Huntington to execute a similar equestrian statue of Joan of Arc for an unveiling in 1915. With this accomplishment, Huntington’s reputation as a premier sculptress was firmly established. The artist became adept with a range of materials, including limestone, cast aluminum, and bronze –- the medium for which she is most famous. She concentrated on animal pieces both wild and domestic, large scale equestrian works, fountains, and portrait busts. A prolific and uniquely talented sculptor, Huntington portrayed animals in highly realistic attitudes, unlike the frozen poses of the romantic animaliers of the second half of the 19th century. She did not want to endow the animals with human qualities, but instead wanted to render them naturally, capturing their own unique characteristics, psychology, and behaviors. In 1923, she married the philanthropist Archer Milton Huntington, whose passion and interest in Hispanic culture influenced his wife’s career and led to many important pieces. The Huntingtons purchased a South Carolina plantation called Brookgreen where they spent winters together. Shortly before settling in South Carolina, Brookgreen was turned into a public outdoor museum for American sculpture. The Huntingtons bought works for the museum and commissioned others, which helped struggling artists during the Depression. An important sculpture museum today, Brookgreen Gardens showcases one of the country’s best collections of American sculpture. At each of their residences, Huntington installed her own zoo, complete with llamas, bears, monkeys and wild boars to inspire her work. Some of her later more monumental works were sculpted at this time, including The Torchbearers, The Prairie Years, and Youth Taming the Wild. While the themes of these works were deeper than some of her animal works, they were no less realistic. Huntington prided herself on modeling tangible subjects rather than abstract ideas. She gleaned inspiration from a limitless variety of sources including advertisements, circus animals and acrobats, and her own deerhounds. Throughout her career, Huntington maintained an exhausting exhibition schedule, and received countless honors and awards. The artist worked another dozen years, well into her nineties, until one year before her death in 1973. Anna Hyatt Huntington is currently represented in more than 200 museums, parks and gardens of major cities throughout the world.

Creator:
Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington (1876 - 1973)
Creation Year:
1925
Dimensions:
Height: 8 in (20.32 cm)Width: 8 in (20.32 cm)Depth: 5 in (12.7 cm)
Medium:
Bronze
Movement & Style:
American Realist
Period:
Early 20th Century
Condition:
Gallery Location:
Washington, DC
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU123825491492