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“Hermon and Jo” ~ #3 ~ ~ “At the Peaks of Careers” ~ ~ MacNeil Month 2021
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Jo Davidson, Sculptor, 1937
Hermon Atkins MacNeil, ~1934
Hermon MacNeil
and Jo Davidson
1912 – 1929
MacNeil Month ~ ~ Story #3 ~ ~ ~ ~
Feb. 2021 ~ “Two Careers”
BY 1912 JO DAVIDISON and HERMON MacNEIL
were parting ways artistically.
Hermon MacNeil continued making Historical Subjects, World’s Fairs, and Monuments as he had for 20 years (1893-1912).
[ Photos and hot-links to MORE MacNeil works appear at the end of this post …⇓ ]
Jo Davidson after a decade of searching and wandering, to fulfill some inner talent,
he discovered his “Sculptor Within.”
Review: Jo made repeated attempts (1903-7) at studying the “Beaux Arts” style at the Art Students League of New York, learning it “hands-on” in the MacNeil Studio with John Gregory, and Henri Crenier (and all their teasing), under the quiet tutelage of Hermon MacNeil. Then actually traveling to Paris without scholarship or support to enroll in the actual Ecole des Beaux-Arts.
BUT … LEAVING THERE after 3 weeks because he sensed that Beaux Arts was training him to sculpt “Antiquities” WHEN he wanted to “SCULPT LIFE.”
Jo Davidson
In 1909 before coming back to New York City, Jo married Yvonne de Kerstrat, a French actress and sister of an artist friend, Louis de Kerstrat. Their son Jacques was born the next year.
The next several years were very productive for the sculptor. His figural works included a bronze statuette of Ida Rubinstein and an eight-foot bronze La Terre.
ONE-MAN SHOWS X 3. In 1911 Jo began presenting one-man shows. The first opened in the New York in April, then a second more successful one at Reinhardt Galleries in Chicago in November. This included twenty portraits and twenty figures. A third show in New York opened in January 1913 with twenty-two figural works and fifteen portraits. With this growing success in both reputation and finances, Jo could now keep two studios — one in New York and another in Paris.
69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Ave. on-street parking New York City
The Armory Show 1913
Also in 1913, Davidson exhibited in the Armory Show, also known as The International Exhibition of Modern Art. This three-city exhibition started in New York City’s 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Ave. From there it traveled to the Art Institute of Chicago and next to Boston’s Copley Society.
Walt Kuhn, American painter, and a friend of Jo Davidson, was an organizer of the famous Armory Show which was America’s first large-scale introduction to European Modernism in Art. Working with Arthur B. Davies and Walter Pach, Kuhn spent a year, much of it in Europe assembling a collection The exhibition traveled to New York City, Chicago, and Boston and was seen by approximately 300,000 Americans. Of the 1,600 works included in the show, about one-third were European, and attention became focused on them. The selection was almost a history of European Modernism.[https://www.britannica.com/event/Armory-Show-art-show-New-York-City#ref126367]
“Kuhn and Davies had both studied in Europe and developed a
strong appreciation for the groundbreaking developments that were taking place there, particularly in Paris. Both also had ambitious dreams of altering the very fabric of American art and culture. The pair would be particularly instrumental in bringing a display of European art to U.S. shores—the likes of which most Americans had never seen before. With the same sprawling exhibition, they would also provide an opportunity for American artists that they had found so lacking in their own careers.” [ https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-1913-armory-dispelled-belief-good-art-beautiful ]
The show’s sponsor, the Association of American Painters and Sculptors developed in 1911 with the aim of finding suitable exhibition space for young artists. They found ideals and policies of the National Academy of Design too restrictive to innovation. The show introduced the American public accustomed to realistic art to the experimental styles sweeping Paris, namely, Fauvism, Cubism, and Futurism. But most Americans arrived expecting “real art,” namely, the “realistic” representations of the renaissance masters. To these viewers the show was a puzzlement. Observers responded with confusion, shock, or even anger at this “satire” of “real art.”
Jo Davidson and the Armory Show.
The Armory show was labeled many things by American art critics. Frank J. Mather argued that “Post-Impressionism is merely the “harbinger of universal anarchy.” [1] It overwhelmed American isolationism with an artistic invasion of a strange avant garde army of artists. So to most Americans it was a puzzlement both in appearance and reporting afterward. They came expecting “real art,” as “realistic” as the renaissance masters. That was Art! But “This?” “What is this?” Observers responded with confusion, shock, anger, and harsh words at this “satire” of “real art.”
The 1913 Armory Show The International Exhibition of Modern Art opened on February 17, 1913 at the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue. The Armory Show—as it came to be known—had an immediate and profound influence, introducing the avant-garde to America and forever altering the narrative of Modernism in America. Photograph by Percy Rainford, courtesy of Bettmann/Corbis. SOURCE: https://www.thearmoryshow.com/armory-25/one-fair-one-city ON 2-6-2021
Jo Davidson was no stranger to European Modernism. Such experiences of “the unconventional” were part of his strolls of Paris with Sultan by his side. He loved his years on the Left Bank. This Bohemian world of the avant garde enlivened him. It pleased and excited his imagination Such images must have powered his search for that illusive “sculptor within.” His search had gone on for over a decade.
Davidson’s Impact: Jo Davidson appreciated this work, but was hardly a Modernist in his own creativity. Yet he seemed to affect the Armory show in at least two ways:
- Walt Kuhn appreciated Jo Davidson works. He placed them cleverly throughout the display. As such, they became benchmarks of understandable art next to some of the more unusual Modernist pieces. “The artists who created them might know what they intended, but most of them weren’t there and many who were [there] were too shy or found talking too difficult.” 2 Each of Jo’s portrait busts and figures became an oasis of “real” sculpture in the confusing landscape of Modern Art. Confused and puzzled viewers could wander the foreign art territory of the Armory Show and find occasional respite at a “Davidson” work of art.
- In addition, Jo Davidson himself became an occasional ‘Docent’ at the Armory Show. Lois Kuhn in her children’s biography of Davidson captures an anecdotal explanation that conveys the essence of Jo to her audience: “Jo often visited the armory show himself and could easily explain to others not only his own work, but that of those artists unable to speak for themselves. What a man with words Jo was! Lois Kuhn offers this humorous ‘possible’ vignette to her young readers:
- “Its outrageous.” a man protested, looking hard at one of the paintings. “Whoever heard of ‘pink’ grass?“
- Jo chuckled. “But you knew it was grass, didn’t you, sir? It never once occurred to you that it wasn’t anything else, now did it?”
- The man frowned. “Well I don’t care. I don’t like the darn thing anyway!”
- “Nobody said you had to like it, sir, but if you dislike it, why not dislike it with a reason?” Jo thought for a moment, then asked, “Have you ever noticed what colors the shadows on the snow are?”
- The viewer was silent. He was trying hard to remember. Jo knew the man had probably never before bothered to think about such an ordinary thing, although he must have seen it hundreds of times. “No I don’t think I have,” the man admitted, “Do you know?”
- “They’re purple! The artist looks and sees them so. But so can you! Or anyone else. Just notice next time it snows. Then try to think how it would be if the artist painted snow, making the shadows green. You’d still know they were shadows, wouldn’t you?”
- “Okay, you win!” the man sighed. I see your point and you are right!” He smiled, began to turn away, but suddenly turned back and winked at Jo. “You know,” he said strongly, “if more artists could explain things as you do, maybe plain people like me wouldn’t have so darn much trouble trying to find out what they’re up to!”
- Jo grinned back. He was happy knowing just one more person would be able to look at a piece of art and try really to understand it.” 2
infrared landscapes by richard mosse at the 2013 Armory Show. CREDIT: ‘platon, north kivu, eastern congo’, 2012all images courtesy jack shainman gallery.
Note: PINK GRASS at the 2013 Armory Show ~~~ Irish photographer Richard Mosse is celebrated for his striking imagery of eastern congo, and presents ‘infrared landscapes’ at the Armory Show in New York 100 years later from the 7-10 March, 2013. “The photographs are full and rich – the arresting deep reds and crimson hues, candy floss trees and savanna grasses aflame with color. all these surreal elements created through a combination of an obsolete wooden field camera and a rare technique produced by kodak aerochrome, a product developed for military use in the detection of aerial bombing targets. in the late 1960s, the medium was appropriated in artwork for rock musicians like the grateful dead or jimi hendrix, setting the tone for the sublime psychedelic aesthetic of the time.”
Jo Davidson revels in “PORTRAIT BUST-ing” 
By the end of 1913 Davidson had done more than thirty portrait busts. He had a reputation for being “fast” and “good” at that craft. The Davidson’s returned to France, with a second son, Jean, and found a house in Céret, which is near the border with Spain about 20 miles from the Mediterranean Sea. His wife’s brother Louis de Kerstrat had purchased a small house there. More importantly, growing reputation of Céret was as “the refuge of Picasso, Matisse, Soutine and Chagall” It would eventually be known as “the Mecca of the Cubists.” Moving there he met Picasso and Aristide Maillol. Soon Jo was off to London which presented a wealth of opportunities for making portraits of notables.
LORD NORTHCLIFFE 1913 by Jo Davidson. “Between …” p.54b.
“Portrait became an obsession. Meeting and knowing people meant becoming acquainted with their thinking.” Jo Davidson
From a studio in Thackery House he roved cafes, bars, watering holes seeing and being seen by journalists, authors, and celebrities. His 1914 exhibition at Leicester Galleries included busts of newspaper mogul Lord Northcliffe, Frank and Nell Harris, and George Bernard Shaw.
THE TASTE OF WAR
When WWI broke out, Davidson wanted a place in the effort and through Lord Northcliffe was appointed an artist-correspondent to accompany veteran correspondent George Lynch. The first went to Ostend, Belgium on the English Channel finding a “dead city.” They went on east to Ghent climbing 194 steps in a church tower observing the battle of Grenberegen nearly 15 miles distant. He didn’t enjoy it!
Jo Davidison’s LIBERTY BONDS poster- THE GUT PUNCH.
He later tried to make sketches but without enthusiasm. At an ambulance he met doctors and nurses who spoke no French and he was called over to translate. He received word that their hotel in Ostend had been bombed and destroyed the day they left.
The Germans were advancing and the British were retreating. He saw a priest comforting a soldier with open severe facial wounds. On the road back to Ostend he passed carts filled with old women, children and babies. People carrying pots and pans, a goat, a mattress, a chair, something they could not part with. “War” was no longer just a word in the history books.
Heartsick, Jo returned to London wanting to do something in clay to express what he saw in France. Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote three lines:
FRANCE AROUSED 1914 by Jo Davidson. [Between… p 86a.]
“When France in wrath her giant – limbs upreared,
And with that oath, which smote air, earth, and sea,
Stamped her strong foot and said she would be free.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The result for Jo was “France Aroused.”
“It was a figure of Bellona,
the goddess of War,
with her feet squarely planted on the on the ground,
her arms upraised, fists clenched,
and her head thrown back —
a cry of rage and protest.” [
Between …, p.11.]
RETURNING TO Céret — His Home was converted to a HOSPITAL
On May 26, 1915, Yvonne offered their home in Céret as an auxiliary hospital, Bénévole No. 62 with 40 beds, two nurses and Yvonne in charge. She was up at five A.M. and when all retired would pour over the books in the wee hours. Their five-year-old son, Jacques, dressed in the uniform of a Chasseur Alpin presided at the head of the evening dinner table in a black baret the Apline hunters.
In 1916 Davidson returned to New York exhibiting fifty-five sculptures and war drawings at Reinhardt Galleries and in June modeled President Wilson. He began to realize the historical value of his collection of works. When the United States entered the War in 1917 Davidson decided to make a “plastic history” by modeling portraits of Allied civil and militrary chiefs. So we left for France with funding from Gertrude Whitney and letters of reference from previous subjects. The result — The Peace Conference Series — fourteen portraits of including General John J. Pershing (1918), Marshal Ferdinand Foch (1918), who signed his portrait beginning a tradition that Jo continued, Lord Arthur Balfour (1919), George Clemenceau (1920).
1923 – Gertrude Stein and Jo had met in 1909. He assessed that a head of her was not enough. He decided to do a seated figure — “a sort of a modern Buddha.” [Between …, 174-7.]
“Gertrude was a very rich personality. Her wit and her laughter were contagfious. She loved good food and served it. While I was doing her portrait, She would come around my studio with a manuscript and read it aloud. The extraordinary part of it was that, as she read, I never felt any sense of mystification. ‘A rose is a rose is a rose,’ she took on a different meaning with each inflection. When she read aloud got the humor of it. We both laughed, and her laughter was something to hear. There was an eternal quality about her — she somehow symbolized wisdom.”
John D. Rockefeller 1924
The only person Jo Davidson ever wrote to requesting to do a portrait bust was John D. Rockefeller. One month later he received a Letter from his son, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. containing several questions.
Jo Davidson and John D. Rockefeller modeling his portrait
Several days later John D, Jr. visited the studio with more questions and discussed all details of the venture. A truck arrived carrying all of Davidson’s studio equipment to the Rockefeller Estate in Tarrytown, north of the city.
On their meeting Rockefeller told Jo, “Davis … Davison … Davidson.” The first was his secretary’s name, the second his own middle name, and finally Jo’s last name. Rockefeller voiced the ironic trilogy and his usual “A-ll good.” After meeting his new subject, Davidson, Jo entered into the daily routine and was invited to stay as a house guest rather that commute by train daily. Jo’s descriptions of his time with the family patriarch and his storytelling are as illuminating as his sculpting.
When Jo finished, Rockefeller invited all the house staff to come in and see his fresh likeness. “Come __ in,” he said. “Take__ your__ time. Have a good look at it__ yes? A-ll good. Thank You.”
The son, John D. Jr., liked the finished bust so much that he commissioned Jo to execute it in marble, and also to make a colossal head in stone to be put in the Standard Oil Building.
1927 Pioneer Woman ~ Ponca City, OK ~ E.W. Marland
A reunion for Hermon and Jo and John Gregory.
CONFIDENT – The winning PIONEER WOMAN by Bryant Baker
TRUSTING (1927) by Jo Davidson
CHALLENGING. 1927. Hermon MacNeil
SELF RELIANT by A. Stirling Calder
In 1927 wealthy oilman E. W. Marland of Ponca City, Oklahoma invited a dozen American sculptors to compete for a commission to create a statue to honor the Pioneer Woman. Each artist was to submit a two-foot bronze model for the monument, which was to express, in Marland’s words, “the spirit of the pioneer woman—a tribute to all women of the sunbonnet everywhere.”
PROTECTIVE by John Gregory
Marland’s selection of that dozen sculptors became something of a reunion for Jo Davidson[1] and Hermon MacNeil and John Gregory (an earlier assistant with Davidson in MacNeil’s studio). Others invited were invited included James Earle Fraser, Bryant Baker, and A. Stirling Calder. Each of the dozen were paid $10,000 to produce a bronze two-foot statue model with the winner to be determined by public vote.
The models were sent on a six-month tour of several U.S. cities, from New York and Boston to Minneapolis and Fort Worth and Chicago. Tens of thousands of ballots were cast, and Baker’s model “Confident” won by a margin of nearly two to one. Neither MacNeil or his two previous students won the commission.
Bryant Baker’s entry won the final comission by a wide margin of ballots. Each artist submitted a two-foot bronze model for the monument, which was to express, in Marland’s words, “the spirit of the pioneer woman—a tribute to all women of the sunbonnet everywhere.”
JO DAVIDSON STRIKES OIL
Jo Davidson charmed E. W. Marland so that he built a permanent studio for the sculptor in Ponca City. Jo declined moving there permanently, but did spent weeks there completing statues of E. W., his daughter, Lyde standing holding a large garden bonnet; and son, George, in boots and riding breeches. He also carved a seated figure of E.W. Marland in marble which remains outside the museum a century later.
After completing the sculptures, E. W. Marland took Jo on a trip to California and back to New York in his private railroad car the “Ponca City.” Jo wrote letters to Yvonne during the two-week excursion. Jo met E. W.’s friends, and E.W. met Jo’s friends. “The Trip, one of the richest experiences of my life, eventually was over, and I set out for Europe where political developments were moving at a rapid pace.” [Between …, pp. 210-220.]
Hermon Atkins MacNeil
“Monument Man”
Photos of his works from 1912 to 1929
Hot Links to MacNeil Sculptures follow …
Visit these links for further information on these ststues and monuments:
1912 – 1929
- 1912 “Into the Unknown” ~ Brookgreen Gardens, SC
- 1912 Orville Platt of Meriden, Connecticut
- 1912 Soldiers and Sailors Monument, Albany,NY
- 1915 “Column of Progress.” Panama-Pacific International Exposition ~ destroyed
- 1915 “The Signs of the Zodiac.” Panama-Pacific International Exposition ~ destroyed
- 1916 “George Washington” New York City
- 1916 Patten Gymnasium, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL
- 1916-30 “Standing Liberty Quarter” Types I & II
- 1918 “Ezra Cornell” ~Cornell University, Ithica, NY
- 1920 “Dwight L. Moody” – Bust at Mount Hermon Northfield Academy, Massachusetts
- 1924 Missouri Capitol, Jefferson City – “Privitive History of Missouri” – North Frieze of building
- 1925 “The World War” Flushing, NY
- 1926 “Manhattan Tercentenary Medal” ~ American Numismatic Society
- 1926 “Marquette, Jolliet, Ilini” Statue ~Chicago
- 1926 “Roger Williams” ~ NY University ~ Hall of Fame – bust
- 1927 Civil War Soldiers and Sailors Monument ~ Philadelphia, PA
- 1928 “Abraham Lincoln” Bust at Lincoln Hall, U of I, Urbana, IL
- 1928 “Rufus Choate” ~ NY University ~ Hall of Fame – bust
- 1928 MacNeil Clan of America ~ Memorial Plaque and Mounument
- 1928 “Abraham Lincoln” Bust at Rushville Public Library, Rushville, Illinois
SOURCES:
- F. J. Mather argued that “Post-Impressionism is merely the harbinger of universal anarchy.” [1913, March 6, “Newest Tendencies in Art,” Independent 74, pp.504-512.] Cited in, On The Margins Of Art Worlds, By Larry Gross p. ?
- Kuhn, Lois Harris. The World of Jo Davidson. Farrar, Straus and Cudhay: New York, 1958. p. 86 -87.
- Marland Museum: https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2013/the-american-west-in-bronze/blog/posts/pioneer-woman
- Here’s a 2010 Update on this Story: 2010 Ponca City duplicates 12 models:https://oklahoman.com/article/3455825/ponca-city-welcomes-back-one-dozen-pioneer-women
CLICK HERE to see March for George Floyd as they pass
George Washington by Hermon A. MacNeil.
Above the rally, MacNeil’s likeness of General Washington guarded the rear flanks of the marchers.
Protesters marched at Washington Square Park in Manhattan on Monday. (June 9, 2020) [Credit…Demetrius Freeman for The New York Times]
The photo shows H. A. MacNeil‘s statue of George Washington looking down on 1000’s of Protesters as they remember George Floyd and march for Justice two weeks after his death at the hands of four Minneapolis Police officers.
MacNeil’s statue has seen many protests in its 104 years up on that pedestal of the arch, BUT nothing as moving as this. Alexander Sterling Calder‘s statue of President Washington looks on from the left at the crowd. (FOR Bernie Sanders Rally in 2016, CLICK HERE)
Protests continue nationwide, with signs of an ebb after dark.
Two weeks after George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis, demonstrations against police violence continued to fill the streets of cities and towns across the country on Monday.
About 1,000 protesters gathered in Los Angeles near a memorial for those killed by the police. Thousands more called for police reforms before a City Council meeting in Charlotte, N.C. And more than 1,000 made their way to a march that began in Washington Square Park in Manhattan.
“This is a young, young revolution,” said Vidal Guzman, 29, as he led marchers down Fifth Avenue in New York. “These are teenagers, people in their 20s, 30-year-olds. We have energy. We believe in what we’re doing, and we’re not going to let up.”
Still, there were signs in parts of the country that the demonstrations that have raged through cities after dark over the past two weeks appeared to be ramping down in many places.
PHILADELPHIA – Another BLM Protest march passes the March down the Ben Franklin Parkway from the Art Museum to City Hall.
The Rally-goers pass between the two 60 foot columns of MacNeil, Civil War Soldiers and Sailors Monument
PHILADELPHIA — Thousands of people demanding justice for George Floyd flooded the streets of downtown Philadelphia on Saturday, chanting “No justice, no peace!”
Demonstrators gathered near the Philadelphia Museum of Art and its famous “Rocky” steps before setting off for the City Hall area, with the line of marchers stretching for several city blocks along the tree-lined Benjamin Franklin Parkway.
The protesters circled City Hall, clapping and shouting, “Black Lives Matter!” as some residents of an apartment building held signs on their balconies reading “BLM” and “Keep Going, Philly,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
To police officers and National Guard members, they chanted: “What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!”
Qadir Sabur, 22, handing out water and snacks and holding a sign that read “Don’t just say Black Lives Matter, show us,” said that in addition to opposition to police brutality, African Americans in the city should benefit from the same opportunities in jobs and education.
SOLDIERS AND SAILORS MONUMENT Philadelphia
Philadelphia – Hermon MacNeil – “Soldiers And Sailors Monument” – South pylon or Sailors side – Being photographed by Dan Leininger, webmaster).
PHILADELPHIA —->>>
~ “Civil War Soldiers and Sailors Monument” ~ Soldiers side North Pylon
Photos: Solidarity on The Square protest in Carlisle PA on Saturday (June 6, 2020)
“I’m not just seeing blacks come together today as one,” he said, “I’m seeing everyone coming together as one,” he told the Inquirer.
By late afternoon, many protesters had left but others lingered around the Art Museum area or along the parkway. Smaller demonstrations were held in other areas, including one by the African American Museum in Philadelphia near Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell.
City officials earlier announced street closures, saying much of the city center, from the Delaware River to the Schuylkill River, would be closed to vehicles. A curfew will be in effect again overnight, from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m., during which time only people with essential duties are allowed out.
Smaller groups also marched in other cities around the state, including several hundred in Pittsburgh and the surrounding area.
Floyd, who was black, died on May 25 after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed a knee into his neck even as he pleaded for air and stopped moving. His death has sparked protests over police treatment of African Americans and racial injustice nationwide
Pennsylvania Governor speaks on the Rally s and needed reforms for Pennsylvania: CLICK HERE:
Philadelphia Sailors Monument with Packard Classic
Posted by: | CommentsNice Packard! Nice Monument.
We have purchased a rare period photograph of a historic Packard automobile which includes some of MacNeil’s public work in Philadelphia. This monument was introduced earlier on this site. [CLICK HERE]. (The Packard was not.)
The exact Packard model pictured here will be identified later. It appears to be from the 1928-1933 era. (Probably a 1929 Model 640 Runabout – Sixth Series)[Actually a 1930 model – dnl].
In 1927 Hermon A. MacNeil sculpted the Philadelphia Soldiers and Sailors Monument that graces the Ben Franklin Parkway.
The Parkway way design was inspired by the Champs-Élysées in Paris, France with its Arc De Triomphe. It commemorated many centuries of French military victories.
Philadelphia chose two grand pylons 60 feet tall rather than an Arch. It was to be Philadelphia’s version of a “grand avenue of heroes” leading out to the Philadelphia Art Museum.
On these limestone pylons, Hermon A. MacNeil carved two Civil War monuments: one to the Soldiers and the second to the Sailor’s of the Civil War. After sixty (60) years, only a few of those who fought were still alive in 1927. This Monument was a tribute to their sacrifice and the “One Union” for which they fought.
Philadelphia’s pride in that history is attributed in the following video celebration.
The Soldiers side of the monument is pictured more often than this Sailor’s side view.
Webmaster, Dan Leininger is a Packard owner and fanatic who possesses a less rare Packard. An older restoration of a 1941 Packard Clipper, the first of the Clipper line.
“Clipper Jack!” Dan’s 1941 Packard Clipper as it appears 78 years after rolling out of the Detroit Packard Plant. Click HERE for my “Hillbilly Packard Brothers” project blog on Packard Info.com
“Confederate Defenders” Sculpture Defaced. ~ Charleston, SC ~ June 20, 2015
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Down the street from The Mother Emmanuel AME Church where nine members were massacred this week while worshiping God in prayer and Bible study stands the Confederate Defenders monument sculpted by Hermon MacNeil. The memorial was defaced with spray paint on Sunday.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/06/21/21/29D7C09E00000578-3133597-Confederate_monument_vandalized-a-58_1434918039434.jpg
Hermon A. MacNeil’s only Confederate monument stands on Battery Point on Charleston Harbor facing out to Fort Sumter 3 1/2 miles away where the first shots of the Civil War was fired . The monument was commissioned for this site in 1932 by The United Daughters of the Confederacy. It has stood for 83 years.
MacNeil’s design was chosen by a local monument committee over all other entries. The allegorical piece depicts the Youth of defenders and the Maternal figure of culture. The shield contains the Seal of the State of South Carolina (the first to succeed from the Union).
Succession Gala: For my own comments on a previous Confederate Celebration and remembrance see this post on this website: “MacNeil Statue will not attend Secession Gala” By (https://hermonatkinsmacneil.com/2010/12/12/macneil-statue-will-not-attend-secession-gala/)
It is unlike any other Civil War Monuments that Hermon MacNeil created. SEE the following links:
- Whitinsville, Massachusetts ( 1905 Monument to Soldiers & Sailors of the Civil War~ Whitinsville, Massachusetts );
- Albany, NY ( 1912 Soldiers and Sailors Monument, Albany,NY );
- Philadelphia Pennsylvania ( 1927 Civil War Soldiers and Sailors Monument ~ Philadelphia, PA );
A June 21st report by Melissa Boughton of The Post and Courrier gives the following details:
The damage was reported to police dispatchers just after 12:30 p.m. The statue was covered up by residents who wrapped a large tarp around it about 1:30 p.m.
Two signs were placed on the tarp after the graffiti was covered up. One said, “All lives matter #charlestonunited,” and the other said, “Take down racist statues.”
The incident occurred in the wake of the fatal shooting Wednesday of nine black people inside Emanuel AME Church in what police say was an attack by a white supremacist. The church held its first service since the shootings on Sunday.
The attack has led to a nationwide call for South Carolina to remove the Confederate battle flag from the Statehouse grounds. At least 1,000 people gathered Saturday in Columbia to call for the flag to be taken down. Numerous petitions also call for the flag’s removal. ( http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20150621/PC16/150629854/confederate-monument-a-focus-of-debate-after-graffiti-appears )
Xavier Rosado and Tighe Berry argue about graffiti discovered, and later covered up, on a Confederate statue downtown near The Battery. http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20150621/PC16/150629854/confederate-monument-a-focus-of-debate-after-graffiti-appears
FOR MORE HISTORY on this work by HERMON MACNEIL see the following:
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/statue-honoring-confederacy-defaced-charleston-park-article-1.2266043
Philadelphia Pride – “Soldiers & Sailors Monument” ~ by H. A. MacNeil
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Hermon Atkins MacNeil, American Sculptor (1866-1947)
Click ‘MUSEUM …’ below – then PLAY
MUSEUM WITHOUT WALLS™: AUDIO –
“Civil War Soldiers and Sailors Memorial”
[from Fairmount Park Art Association on Vimeo.]
“ONE COUNTRY, ONE CONSTITUTION, ONE DESTINY”
This Civil War Soldiers and Sailors Monument was dedicated in 1927. The Monument consists of two 60 foot granite pylons. These pillars mark the entrance to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. This beautiful boulevard leads from Logan Circle through the rolling Parkway Gardens on up the hill to the Philadelphia Art Museums.
- Find the Soldiers panel and Civil War history HERE.
- The Soldiers pylon is pictured below =>
The Soldiers side of the monument
- CLICK HERE for the Ben Franklin Parkway view.
- For DIRECTIONS to this Monument see the Google Map below.
We hope to have our own photos to post at a future date.
Meanwhile, thanks to the citizens and public officials of Philly for this tribute to American history and the work of Hermon Atkins MacNeil.
Happy Birthday Rachel!
[mappress mapid=”25″]
Hermon MacNeil and Jo Davidson ~ #4 ~ “Celebrating Careers” MacNeil Month 2021
Posted by: | Comments MacNeil Month #4 — February 22, 2021
JO Davidson
Political Sculptor
Hermon MacNeil
Monument Maker
1930 – 1944
JO DAVIDSON ~ ~ “Political Sculptor” ~ ~
After the World War, requests for portrait busts occupied much of Jo Davidson’s time sculpting. His reputation for as a sculptor of good works and fast results traveled quicker than even his own frequent migrations across the Atlantic. He described his approach to portraits as “simple.”
“I never had them pose but just talked about everything in the world. Sculpture, I felt, was another language altogether and had nothing to do with words. As soon as I got to work, I felt this other language growing between myself and the person I was “busting.” I felt it in my hands. Sometimes the people talked as if I was their confessor. As they talked, I got an immediate insight into the sitters.” [Between … p86-87.]
That approach used those same talented fingers that twenty years earlier touched clay in a barrel at Yale sculpture lab. Those fingers were still touching the clay of Jo Davidson’s future. Rather than hindering drive and ambition, the War years seemed to focus Jo more sharply. 1
During the decades of the twenties, thirties, and forties “the powerful, the wealthy, and the talented were literally at Davidson’s fingertips. During these three decades he completed hundreds of portraits as well as a numerous figural works.”
DOUBLEDAY PORTRAITS
In 1929 Jo had made a bust of George Doran of Doubleday, Doran and Company. Afterward George proposed an idea that Jo make busts of the company’s best selling authors in America and England. The proposal and opportunities delighted Jo Davidson.
Jo’s self-appointed role as a “plastic historian” of his era contained his own mental list of potential subjects. Many of Doran’s authors were already on Jo’s informal list. Many were already Jo’s personal friends. Later Doran sent a letter with a list of a dozen possible subjects. Doran hosted a series of luncheons to gather the authors and initiate the project.
Aldous Huxley by Jo Davidson, 1930
Through 1929-1930, Davidson modeled in Paris, London and New York to complete the assignment. Eventually he completed portraits of James Boyce, Hugh Walpole, Frank Swinnerton, Edgar Wallace, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Aldous Huxley, Booth Tarkington, Robinson Jeffers, Sir James Barrie, John Galsworthy, Georg Brandes, and Christopher Morley. He made a bust of Rudyard Kippling from sketches made at a group luncheon, a product that delighted Doran.
John Galsworthy by Jo Davidson
In June 1931, Jo Davidson opened a show of the results of the Doran project as “Portrait Busts of Some Contemporary Men of Letters” at Knoedler Galleries on Bond Street in New York City. Jo added his portraits of George Bernard Shaw, James M. Barrie, and John Galsworthy to the show. The event was a benefit for the Royal Literary Fund. Posters flooded the underground with busts of Shaw, Maugham, Lawrence and others.
One reviewer wrote: “I never have never read a book of criticism that so subtly and completely inventoried the mind of the age as this room of Jo Davidson’s. It is a superb exercise of lively, sensitive, well-informed intelligence,” All in all, the project and show assembled this “plastic historian’s” opus of English and American authors who produced many hundreds of novels of thought and imagination of the era. [Between …, p241-264.]
1933 ~ FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT: That Man in the White House
CARTOON: FDR, 1932. ‘Just leave ’em, Herb. I’ll do it all after March 4.’ Cartoon, 1932, by Clifford Berryman.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office as the 32nd President of the United States. The country was reeling in the third year of the Great Depression. after the Stock Market Crash of 1929. Both the ensuing action and inaction of President Hoover continued to fuel the economic crisis and decline. In the next four years, Roosevelt would begin rolling out massive economic relief legislation such as the Emergency Banking Relief Act, the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the National Recovery Administration and the Social Security Act.
At the suggestion of Sara Delano Roosevelt, the President’s mother, Jo Davidson went to Washington, D.C. to meet the new President after he took office on March 4th. On entering the White House, he could hear barking dogs and voices of children in the distance. The atmosphere impressed him as a friendly, alive, gay and human.
The President was rolled in and greeted Jo with a broad, cheerful smile. Then shaking Jo’s hand said:
FDR: “I’ve just had a meeting with a delegation of plasterers who want to have the plasterers and their assistants share in the profits. That will fix your business.”
JoD: “I am not a plasterer, … I am a chiseler!”
Thus cementing our friendship, we made arrangements to get to work. [Between …, p275.]
That evening Jo stayed at the White House for a conversational dinner with 14 guests. Afterward he remained alone with the President and reviewed an album of busts Jo had made. The President asked innumerable questions about Jo’s sitters many of whom he knew. Their lively exchange continued past midnight.
The next day Jo sculpted the President sitting at his desk. People came and went from the office. Jo rolled his stand around to observe from all angles. The President put visitors at ease with jovial comments and winning smile. He continued to work that evening and the next morning even as he sat in bed looking over papers. Jo observed,
“President Roosevelt won me completely with his charm, his beautiful voice and his freedom from constraint. He had unshakable faith in man. All those projects — NRA, CWA, PWA, — all stemmed from his belief that if you give man a chance, he will not let you down.”
Jo outside the White House with his newest friend.
Jo also observed that the President did not forget about the Artists in his relief bills and WPA projects. He admired the Presidents sense of direction. Being a sailor he knew that traveling in a straight line was seldom possible. Keeping a clear objective while tacking on and off course would still get you to the goal.
FROM ‘BUST’ TO ICON Jo would go on to make numerous busts of Roosevelt, big, small, some carved in stone. I observed a casting of this bronze bust bearing the Jo Davidson signature on the back while visiting the Churchill Museum at Fulton College in Fulton, Missouri several summers ago. Churchill made his famous “Iron Curtain” speech there after Roosevelt’s death and the victory of World War II. How thought it fitting that the curators of the Churchill Museum choose Jo Davidson’s bust of FDR to portray that “Friendship that Saved the World.”
Churchill and his family were also White House guests, soaking up the warmth and charm of the “sitting” President as was Jo when he sculpted. Perhaps that warmth explains the thousands of souvenir miniatures imitating the original that are still sold in the marketplace ninety years later. Or maybe as one critic phrased it, “His ‘President Roosevelt’ looks the character that the whole world has readily acknowledged.”
1934 ~ LOSS OF LOVE ~ LOSS OF DIRECTION ~
One day Jo walked by a paint shop and saw a miniature water color set in the window bought it. Less than two inches square he admired it. Compact and complete, it went in his pocket and never left him.
Yvonne had been in poor health for several years, but was anxious to visit California to see their old friends Lincoln Steffens and his wife, Ella Winter. The couples had been constant companions in their early years in Paris visiting Bistros and discovering “special foods in the French manner.” They boarded a train heading cross-country to California. On the train Jo sketch and water-colored his way West.
Arriving in San Francisco they were besieged by reporters: Jo was the sculptor of the President and Yvonne was a great dress designer from Paris. They visited old haunts and old friends staying with the Steffens. But Yvonne felt worse. A doctor was called and she was put on rest. She rallied some, visited old friends, and they returned to New York. Back home Yvonne Davidson suffered a stroke and died two days later.
New York Daily News. Sunday, May 13, 1934.
The loss of his love of twenty-five years devastated Jo, and he began a period of “Restless Days” as he titled that chapter in his autobiography. Those “Days” would last for three years. He left for Paris but could not focus to work. Life felt empty and cold. He returned to his Bécheron studio, but his heart was not in it. Returning to Paris he sought to settle down with his grown sons but their lives were young and Jo’s was old. Finally he returned to New York but without Yvonne, he found it just as lonely as Paris and Bécheron. He felt deep loss of love and direction.
“During these years my life was without an anchor. I kept on traveling — London, New York, Washington, Paris, California, but I was too restless to stay anywhere for very long. I was still looking for some project in which I could completely forget myself. 1
A quarter of a century earlier in his life, Jo was a wanderer — looking, searching, roving until he found “the sculptor within.” But now with the loss of love, the loss of companionship, he struggled to find direction — a reason to work, a passion to give his hands to, a project to consume his active craving for carving art.
MORE DISAPPOINTMENTS He received a letter from a friend asking if he would consider doing a statue of Thomas Paine to be placed in Paris. Paine along with Walt Whitman were two early heroes in Jo’s personal pantheon. After hopes and excitement from friends, he was flattened to learn that the committee his friend was on had already awarded the commission to Gutzum Borglum. Dejected, he put his sketch of Thomas Paine in his studio drawer.
To this regret was added a further blow. Jo returned to Paris only to learn that his beloved friend, Lincoln Steffens, had died. Steffens was a listener. Jo didn’t have many. For nearly two decades he valued that understanding ear. This dear friend’s passing was a deep loss and only compounded the Restless Days with another layer of sorrow.
1935 ~ A NATIONAL LOSS ~ WILL ROGERS DIES
On August 15, 1935, American humorist and “Oklahoma’s Favorite Son,” Will Rogers died with aviator Wiley Post when their small plane crashed after take-off in Point Borrow, Alaska. The pair were on an around-the-globe flight. In 1931 Post had become the first man to fly solo round-the-world.
Will Rogers had become an American Icon. An actor on stage and films, a vaudeville performer, cowboy, humorist, newspaper columnist, and social commentator; Will was “a Cherokee citizen born in the Cherokee Nation, Indian Territory.” The warm humor of this home-spun figure won the hearts of Americans long before his sudden death at the height of the Great Depression. His passing was a shocking sorrow in very trying times for the American public.
Jo Davidson had wanted to do a bust of Rogers but never had. Betty, Will’s wife, had often urged him to pose for Jo. Will would always decline jokingly calling Jo “old that headhunter” to the amusement of Jo and all nearby.
Weeks later dining in New York with Sidney Kent of Fox Films, Jo shared his regret and the desire to immortalize Will Rogers. Kent concurred, and agreed to lend Jo some of Will’s old movies to do the modeling work. Jo received a letter from E. W. Marland, his old oil man friend from Ponca City, Oklahoma and the Pioneer Woman commission. Marland was now Governor Marland. Jo went of Oklahoma City, visited with the Governor and signed a contract to make the Will Rogers statue.
Returning to his Paris Studio the Fox Films crew set up a big projector and large screen and began running continuous movies of Will Rogers in the front studio while Jo worked in the back. Friends gathered in this new Will Rogers “studio” for a week as Jo “worked, talked, and lived nothing but Will Rogers. The films brought back so many memories.” [Between …, p. 298.]
“Betty Rogers sent Wills clothes, his shirt, his tie and his shoes. … Then I had the model put on Will’s clothes. They still contained his personality. Clothes have a way of being impersonal until they are worn; then they become a part of the person who wore them — like a glove before and after wearing. [Between …, pp. 299-300.]
– Will Rogers – Keeping an eye on Congress… since June 6, 1939.
“Before his death, the state of Oklahoma commissioned a statue of Rogers, to be displayed as one of the two it has in the National Statuary Hall Collection of the United States Capitol. Rogers agreed on the condition that his image would be placed facing the House Chamber, supposedly so he could “keep an eye on Congress”. Of the statues in this part of the Capitol, the Rogers sculpture is the only one facing the Chamber entrance—a stakeout location for camera crews looking to catch House members during and after voting. It is also a common background for reporters and lawmakers, with staff often directing the media to be at the “Will Rogers stakeout” at a certain time. According to some Capitol guides, each US president rubs the left shoe of the Rogers statue for good luck before entering the House Chamber to give the State of the Union address.” [34] [Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Rogers]
Claremore, Oklahoma — Will Rogers Museum – centerpiece
When the second statue was dedicated in the rotunda of the Will Rogers Museum in Claremont, Oklahoma. 20,000 people from all over came for the unveiling — Indians, cowboys, and other friends of Will’s. A radio program was broadcast nation-wide and President Roosevelt spoke from Hyde Park. He told the nation of listeners:
“There was something infectious about his humor. His appeal went straight to the heart of the nation. Above all things, in a time grown too solemn and sober, he brought his countrymen back to a sense of proportion “
When Will’s daughter Mary pulled the string unveiling the eight and a half foot statue, “there was a moment of hushed awe. The light fell on the statue just right. Mrs. Rogers, overcome, broke down and wept.” [Between …, p. 300.]
DC Capitol Assault? by “Trump-it-eers!” ~~ What Would Will Rogers Say about January 6, 2021 ?
1939 ~ STARTING AGAIN ~ Walt Whitman walks the Woods
One day Averell Harriman visited Jo in his Paris studio and admired his sketch for a Walt Whitman statue. When Jo lamented that the NY Park Commission refused to place it in three different parks, Averell suggested a home for it in Bear Mountain Park. He invited Jo to his home to view the park for possible sites.
The park had been part of the Harriman property in Arden, NY. His mother had designated 10,000 acres adjoining Bear Mountain as a public park. Averell wanted a statue of Whitman to commemorate his mother’s gift. Jo’s idea of Whitman fit the family’s plans for a commemorative.
Jo returned to New York in the autumn visiting Harriman for the Thanksgiving holidays. He had immersed himself in Walt Whitman and found that the poet had actually roamed through those same hills. Jo tramped along the wooded Appalachian Trail finding a long graceful rock formation large enough to support a bronze statue. He determined with enlarged photostats of his sketch that an eight and a half foot statue would command the rock face as a convincing figure to be found walking in the woods.
Jo Davidson worked off and on for several years on the Walt Whitman figure. In 1939 it was cast and displayed at the New York World’s Fair before finding a final dedication and home on Bear Mountain. 
RECASTING: Jo had had so many disappointments that never expected the statue to emerge beyond his sketch. But it did! Matter of fact, in 1957, six years after Jo Davidson’s death, the Fairmont Park Art Association of Philadelphia placed another casting of the statue on Broad Street near the entrance to the Walt Whitman Bridge.
Davidson described his satisfaction in this period of his life in these words:
“THERE IS NO GREATER HAPPINESS THAN WORKING ON SOMETHING THAT ONE VERY MUCH WANTS TO DO.”
THE ‘WORK OF ART’ ~ the RECOVERING THE PASSION
The passion of Jo Davidson’s life was sculpting. One day when he and his friend six-foot-three friend, Charlie, (Charles W. Ervin) with a “booming voice” were in the Jo’s studio having lunch:
“I got an itch to do a bust of that booming voice. The bust seemed to do itself I think that André Gide’s definition of a work of art applied in this case: “A collaboration between the subconscious, which is God’s part, and the artist; and the less the artist interferes, the greater the work of art.” This has happened to me several times in my life as a sculptor. … if I can hear the sitter’s voice, I know that the bust is good.
Jo had a very spacious studio in the Beaux Arts building. He he was happy there especially as people could and would drop by; he needed people around. It was a busy studio where Jo completed one sitting with another. Among others he did:
David Sarnoff – President of National Broadcasting Company who championed the development of broadcast communications in radio and television.
Edward MacCarten – Sculptor and Jo’s old friend from Art Students League and another of Hermon MacNeil’s student who gave him the following advise:“One day he said, “Jo, here’s an idea. When you come here tomorrow go to work as if this is your last day on earth and you have to finish your statue before you die.” This struck home. The next day I went to work with new energy. I didn’t die that night, nor did I finish the “David” that day. But as I look back, MacCarten’s advise was one of the greatest contributions that I ever received from a fellow artist.”
They met up again when Jo came to Paris to study Beaux Arts with no Scholarship, no support, and $40 in his pocket during Jo’s adventuring and searching years.
Sinclair Lewis – American writer and playwright. First writer from the United States to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature,
A BRIEF REPRISE of old love ~~ One day into that busy studio walked another former sculptor from days at the Art Student League:
“When I finished (Sinclair) Lewis’ bust, Florence Lucius was in my studio and we were talking about portraiture. She reminded me of John Sargent’s definition of a portrait, ‘a picture of somebody with something the matter with the mouth.’ Some ten minutes later Dorothy Thompson came in to look at her husband’s bust. She gave one glance, turned to me and said, “It’s very good but there is something the matter with the mouth.'” [Between …, p303.]
A passing moment of shared irony ? …
with a briefly re-discovered old friend ? …
but MAYBE it was more… ? ? ?
MORE PLASTIC HISTORY – THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR In the summer and fall of 1938 modeled portraits of Spanish Loyalists of the Civil War. The results were exhibited in the Arden Gallery in New York City and published as: Jo Davidson: Spanish Portraits. New York: The Georgian Press, Inc., 1938.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
FLORENCE “Flossie” LUCIUS ~ OLD LOVE REKINDLES
After many years of rumblings, World War II began 1939. Jo turned over his farm and home in Bécheron to the Vichy government to house various attachés. So in 1940 he returned to the United States. Jo states that he “was still at loose ends, restless and haunted by a vague sense of dissatisfaction. There was no real reason for this complicated business of living” Jo’s passion for sculpting was interrupted.
Into Jo Davidson’s global and personal malaise walked an old flame he had fallen hard for three decades earlier — “Flossie” Florence Lucius.
“Then one day, I found my old love of the Art Students League days, Florence Lucius. I hadn’t seen her for several years. … With Flossie around, life began to take on a new meaning and the studio began bubbling with life and buzzing with people.
Jo and Flossie visited friends in Bucks County, Pennsylvania and while driving around Jo saw a farm for sale that reminded him of Bécheron. Jo asked his architect friend Burral Hoffman to look it over as a possible home and studio.
HEART CRISIS ! Although Jo had rediscovered the love of his young heart, at fifty-seven years his own heart was showing signs of hard-working wear. Out at dinner with friends “… I felt an excruciating pain in my left arm, and the next day, I was in the hospital with a heart attack. I spent six weeks in the hospital.”
Burrell Hoffman came to see him with the proposal of sketches showing how the barn of the Bucks County farm could be converted into a wonderful studio space. Jo was delighted with the plans and future studio, his American Bécheron. At discharge the doctor ordered complete rest and no worries so Jo and Florence went to the Virgin Islands staying for two blissful months. Until one evening a Jimmy Sheean, (a fresh-faced and insolent radio announcer who brought home the war to American listeners) began “reporting the bombing of a Red Cross train in France by the Germans. Other voices told of roads filled with refugees. In the peace and quiet of this beautiful night in St. Thomas the news was appalling. I packed my bags and returned to New York.”
The words “roads filled with refugees” had to trigger Jo’s memories of similar scenes he witnessed in 1914 while covering WW I first-hand from Belgium. He went from “refugee stories” to his new American Bécheron in Bucks County. The new studio and home now renamed “Stone Court Farm” was now ready for the new couple.
SCULPTING AGAIN ~ Roosevelt’s 3rd 
Characteristically, Jo very quickly got his first sculpting job. In a phone call he was asked to do the third inaugural medal for President Roosevelt This was a rush job with just days to complete. Sent a photograph to work from, Jo became frustrated. Jo sculpted from life not antique photographs. He just couldn’t properly do a bas-relief this way. So, he made his own phone call, flew to Washington and the 32nd President posed for two sittings. Rush mission accomplished!
SOUTH AMERICAN JOURNEY ~ Good Will Ambassador
Florence Lucius Davidson
On evening visiting with friends Jo met John Abbott who worked for Nelson Rockefeller, Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs. The agency’s mission was to promote inter-American cooperation (Pan-Americanism) especially in commercial, cultural and economic areas thus strengthening U. S. ties with South American Nations. The idea was conceived that night for Jo to travel as a Good Will Ambassador making busts of Presidents of South American Republics. The idea quickly became an official mission to create busts of ten presidents.
Needing an Assistant, Jo turned to Flossie, a sculptor herself. Jo also wanted her to marry him which they did after arriving in Venezuela. They had known each other since days as art students. It had been puppy love back then now both those old feelings came right back and their need for each other at this point in life’s journey brought a new sense of happiness that they both needed and deserved. So now Florence Lucius became Florence Lucius Davidson, and Jo added another portrait bust to his growing collection.
On the six month mission to South America, Jo had to travel by flying. “From country to country — Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Peru, Ecuador, Columbia, Bolivia, and others — he flew, modeling the presidents he met in clay, casting them in bronze on his return to the United States. There, they were exhibited in the National Gallery of Arts in Washington. Later, they were given to the various countries as a gift from the United States.” 5.
Writing to Flossie about Jo, Van Wyck Brooks once stated, “He’s an entire United Nations in his own way.” On this Good Will Ambassador tour that could not have been more true.
Back home again. There soon followed portrait busts of Henry Wallace, Vice President of the United States; Ernie Pyle, reporter and war correspondent; Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, and Van Wyck Brooks, biographer, literary critic, and historian.
THIRTY YEARS AND HUNDREDS OF SCULPTURES
In the thirty years (1920-1949) Jo Davidson would go on to travel the world making hundreds of portrait busts and figures. Some on commission, but many just because he was asked or he just wanted to. Looking around his studio one day, He said he realized that he was the World’s Largest Collector of “Jo Davidson” busts.
Jo Davidson with Busts of 8 Presidents that he completed.
Jo continued his constant pace of sittings for portrait bust — just a few of those “sitters” included:
Clarence Darrow 1929, Charlie Chaplin 1925, Lincoln Steffens 1920, Robert M. La Follette 1923, W. Averell Harriman 1935, Franklin Roosevelt 1933, 1951, Fiorello LaGuardia (1934), Andrew Mellon (1927), Andrew Furuseth (1929) Mother Jones (1922), Carl Sandburg 1931, Ignace Paderewski (1920), Will Rogers (1935-38), Mahatma Gandhi (1931), Albert Einstein (1934). Arthur Conan Doyle, Israel Zangwill, Albert Einstein 1937, Emma Goldman, Frank Harris, Hellen Keller 1942, John D. Rockefeller 1924, Dolores Ibárruri, Franklin Roosevelt 1934, 1951, Henry A. Wallace, Walt Whitman, , Dwight D. Eisenhower 1948, H. G. Wells, Gertrude Stein 1923, Josip Tito, Carl Sandburg 1939, Edward Willis Scripps 1922, George Bernard Shaw 1931, Mahatma Gandhi, James Joyce, Rudyard Kipling, D. H. Lawrence, Henry Luce, James Barrie, Joseph Conrad, Charles G. Dawes, Will Rogers 1935-38, Anatole France, André Gide, Robinson Jeffers 1930, John Marin and Ida Rubinstein. 1
That tactile process of wordless communication accelerated “the portrait sculptor within.” And his fame kept preceding him as he assembled a PLASTIC HISTORY OF HIS TIMES
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jo Davidson as AMATEUR POLITICIAN
~ ROOTING FOR ROOSEVELT ~
Jo Davidson ~ Political Sculptor
TIME Sept. 9, 1946. Jo Davidson Featured
TIME magazine put Jo Davidson’s face on the cover in September, 1946. The cover lampoon and story inside form a satirical and rather pejorative piece about Jo’s later activities in the political spotlight after FDR’s death in April 1945. 
The cover featured a cartoon figure speaking words “Vote For…” into a microphone. The figure was a collage of a palette board face, a violin torso, paint brush legs, sculptors tools arms, standing on three books and a soap-box.
Jo was famous, loved people, circulated in an extensive network of the wealthy and famous including Hollywood. Davidson had become a political activist and was reluctantly elected chairman of the Independent Citizens Committee of Artists, Scientists, and Professionals (ICCASP), a group that supported the policies of President Franklin Roosevelt but now FDR was gone.
Originally formed as the Independent Voters Committee of the Arts and Sciences for Roosevelt, its organizational meeting was held in Jo’s studio (the only room big enough to hold a crowd). Jo was elected chairman because he was the host that everybody knew. This progressive collage included Actors, Musicians, Entertainers, Authors, Poets, Artists, Painters, Political activists, Scientists. Their mission was to illuminate the 1944 re-election campaign of President Roosevelt by shining the star-power this distinguished collection of public faces and names behind an ongoing Roosevelt agenda.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt (L), talking to the Independent Voters Committee (L to R) Van Wyck Brooks, Hanna Dornen, Jo Davidson, Jan Jiepung, Joseph Cotton, Dorothy Gish, Dir. Harlow Shapely and James Proctor. (Photo by George Skadding/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images)
Jo reports that when the group went to call on the President, he jokingly asked “Jo, have they called you a Communist yet?” They hadn’t, but Jo didn’t have long to wait. The TIME story suggests that the group had picked up a few Communists, like the fleas on a dog. Jo Davidson suggested to the reporter that “its Communists have no more to do with its course that fleas do with a dog’s.” To the question of Communist influence, Jo Davidson replied: “Have you stopped beating your wife.”
After Roosevelt’s death and President Harry Truman succeeding him into the office, the group had to refocus in Post World War II America. An opponent of the Cold War policies of Harry S. Truman, he joined the Progressive Citizens of America (PCA). Other members included Rexford Tugwell, Paul Robeson, W.E.B. Du Bois, Arthur Miller, Dashiell Hammett, Hellen Keller, Thomas Mann, Aaron Copland, Claude Pepper, Eugene O’Neill, Glen H. Taylor, John Abt, Edna Ferber, Thornton Wilder, Carl Van Doren, Fredric March and Gene Kelly.
Davidson supported Henry A. Wallace in the 1948 Presidential Election. Wallace’s running-mate was Glen H. Taylor, the left-wing senator for Idaho. A group of conservatives, including Henry Luce, Clare Booth Luce, Adolf Berle, Lawrence Spivak and Hans von Kaltenborn, sent a cable to Ernest Bevin, the British foreign secretary, that the PCA were only “a small minority of Communists, fellow-travelers and what we call here totalitarian liberals.” Winston Churchill agreed and described Wallace and his followers as “crypto-Communists”.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
“No one ever met Jo and then forgot him. Wherever he was, his vibrant personality pervaded. He was tremendously gifted for the work he did. He was intelligent, incisive, witty, a marvelous raconteur. His enthusiasm was endless. He hated everything mean or intolerant.”
– Harry Rosin – Bucks County Sculptor and neighbor https://bucksco.michenerartmuseum.org/artists/jo-davidson
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Jo Davidson Sculptures [partial list of hotlinks]:
- Manuel Azaña
- Julio Álvarez del Vayo
- James Barrie
- Nicholas Murray Butler
- Charlie Chaplin
- Madame Chiang Kai-shek
- Joseph Conrad
- Émile Coué (who was also a sculptor in his spare time)
- Clarence Darrow
- Charles G. Dawes – bust, part of the United States Senate Vice Presidential Bust Collection
- Arthur Conan Doyle
- Albert Einstein
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
- Marshal Ferdinand Foch
- Anatole France
- Mahatma Gandhi
- André Gide
- Emma Goldman
- W. Averell Harriman
- Frank Harris
- Dolores Ibárruri (La Pasionaria)
- Robinson Jeffers
- James Joyce
- Otto Kahn[3]
- Helen Keller
- Rudyard Kipling
- Robert M. La Follette, Wisconsin contribution to National Statuary Hall, United States Capitol
- D. H. Lawrence
- Edward Drummond Libbey, founder of the Libbey Glass Company and the Toledo Museum of Art in Toledo, Ohio
- Henry Luce
- John Marin
- E. W. Marland
- Lydie Marland and her brother George Roberts Marland
- Lowell Mellett
- Andrew Mellon
- Constancia de la Mora
- General John J. Pershing
- John D. Rockefeller
- Will Rogers (posthumous) – the original statue donated to the Will Rogers Memorial Hospital in Saranac Lake, New York
- Will Rogers (posthumous) – bronze, Oklahoma contribution to National Statuary Hall, United States Capitol, erected in 1939
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt installed at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park
- Ida Rubinstein
- Carl Sandburg
- E. W. Scripps
- George Bernard Shaw
- Lincoln Steffens
- Gertrude Stein
- Rabindranath Tagore
- Marshal Tito[4]
- Getúlio Vargas
- H. G. Wells
- Henry A. Wallace – bust, part of the United States Senate Vice Presidential Bust Collection
- Walt Whitman (posthumous) – full-body bronze statue at the Walt Whitman Bridge in Philadelphia, and in Bear Mountain State Park, New York.
- Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney
- Walt Whitman statue
- Evan Williams (Opera tenor)
- Woodrow Wilson
- Israel Zangwill
- SOURCE: Wikipedia; Jo Davidson:
SOURCES for Davidson material:
- Spartacus Educational: Jo Davidson. © John Simkin, May 2013. FOUND AT: https://spartacus-educational.com/Ajo_davidson.htm
- TIME, “Political Notes: Glamor Pusses.” VOL. XLVIII, No. 11, September 9, 1946. pp. 23-25.
- Connor, Janis and Joel Rosenkranz, photographs by David Finn, Rediscoveries in American Sculpture: Studio Works, 1893 – 1939, University of Texas Press, Austin TX 1989.
- Jo Davidson. Between Sittings: An Informal Autobiography of Jo Davidson, New York: Dial Press, 1951.
- Lois Harris Kuhn. The World of Jo Davidson, New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudhay, 1958. p. 153.
- HERMON ATKINS MACNEIL
- ~ ~ More Monuments ~ 1930 ~ 1940 ~ ~
1930 ~ “The Pilgrim Memorial” ~ Waterbury, CT
ABOUT THE PIONEER MEMORIAL
“The Harrub Pilgrim Memorial was carved out of French granite by Hermon Atkins MacNeil of New York. Charles Harrub, an engineer for the American Brass Company, donated the $100,000 needed for the project to honor his wife and the Pilgrims. Dedicated October 11, 1930. It is now located at the corner of Highland Avenue and Chase Parkway. (Photo by Daniel M. Lynch, Mattatuck Consulting, LLC.”
This website of tells the history of settling Waterbury CT from 1657 to the American Revolution. Descendants of early settlers give family genealogy and memorable stories. Source: OFFICIAL WEBSITE of the RIVER-HOPKINS and SAEMANN-NICKEL and Related Families
A second history blog of Waterbury offers additional photos and history of the memorial. Here’s a photo from dedication day.
“Sculptor Hermon Atkins MacNeil was commissioned to create the monument. Based in New York City, MacNeil is remembered for having designed the 1917 quarter, as well as for a series of sculptures depicting Native Americans in classically heroic poses.
The Harrub Memorial was completed in 1930 and unveiled at a ceremony held on October 11, 1930. Although it is now located at the top of Chase Park, off Highland Avenue, the monument was originally placed at the bottom of the hill, facing Freight Street.”
1930 ~ Judge Thomas Burke Memorial
In Seattle, Washington the Memorial to Judge Thomas Burke exhibits MacNeil’s classic Beaux Arts design and allegorical 
figures. Beneath the bronze bas relief of Burke’s profile, the engraved stone pilaster reads: “Patriot, Jurist, Friend, Patron of Education, First of every movement for the advancement of the city and the state, Seattle’s foremost and best beloved Citizen.”
“Burke came to Seattle in 1875 and
formed a law partnership with John J. McGilvra; he soon married McGilvra’s daughter Caroline.[2] He established himself as a civic activist: one of his first projects was to raise funds for a planked walkway from roughly the corner of First and Pike (now site of Pike Place Market) through Belltown to Lake Union.[7]
Cartoon of Thomas Burke, railroad man
He served as probate judge
1876-1880[8] and as chief justice of the Washington Territorial Supreme Court in 1888.[3]
“Irish as a clay pipe,”[9] and well liked by early Seattle’s largely Irish working class, as a lawyer Burke was well known for collecting large fees from his wealthy clients and providing free legal services for the poor. [Source: Thomas Burke (railroad builder)]
1931 ~ President James Monroe bust
US President James Monroe
Exactly 100 years after James Monroe‘s death (b. April 28, 1758 – d.July 4, 1831), Hermon MacNeil completed a bronze bust of this U.S. President. It was MacNeil’s fourth statue of a US President. (Washington 1916, Lincoln 1928, McKinley 1906)
This bronze bust by Hermon MacNeil resides in the Hall of Fame of Great Americans on the campus of Bronx Community College (formerly NYU). The aging memorial of over 100 busts was designed by Stanford White, famous “Beaux Arts” architect of New York City.
Monroe was the fifth President of the United States (1817–1825). He was the last president from the group known as the Founding Fathers. Monroe was also the last President from the Virginia dynasty. In 1936 MacNeil would sculpt one other Virginian from the Revolutionary era — “George Rogers Clark” (National Monument in Vincennes, Indiana site of the Clark’s Revolutionary victory at Fort Sackville).
CHECK OUT THESE LINKS ALSO:
- Hall of Fame: MacNeil has Four busts enshrined there.
- MORE: on Monroe
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1931 ~ HOPI ~~ PRAYER FOR RAIN ~~ Issue #3
When Hermon MacNeil was asked to make the Third Issue of the new Society of Medalists Series, He chose to revert to his early experiences of 1895 of Native American in the Arizona and New Mexico territory.
1932 CONFEDERATE DEFENDERS
~~ Charleston, SC ~~ Ft Sumter Harbor ~~
Grafetti after shooting at Mother Emmanuel Church Charleston 2015
The “Confederate Defenders” designed and sculpted by Hermon A. MacNeil was selected by a committee of Charlestonians from over a dozen proposals of other sculptors.
Unlike many monuments featuring soldiers, cannons arms, horsed and battles raging, MacNeil’s concept was different.
I like to think that the committee awarded the commission for this design because of its classical Beaux Arts treatment of allegorical symbolism. In MacNeil communicated — Youth, Athleticism, defense, the shield bearing the Seal of South Carolina, The Athena Goddess of Charleston.
In the 21 Century the Monument has become a “protest site” after shootings in 2015 at a Bible study at Mother Emanuel Church a few blocks north.
More recently opposing groups such as: Black Lives Matter and Flags Across the South. Have protested on the site.
Both groups gathered. Black Lives Matter marchers held their signs along The Battery wall. Across the street at the Confederate Defenders Monument, members of as Charleston Police stood watch.
Eventually the City Council worked out a compromise schedule of rotating permits for the plaza of the statue area
1932 U.S. Supreme Court Building ~ East Pediment
Moses ~ Confucius ~ Salon
General Alfred Howe Terry
General John Sedgwick
1934 ~ Alfred H. Terry ~ Connecticut Capitol Building
Location: south elevation. Artist: Hermon MacNeil.
1934 ~ John Sedgwick ~ Connecticut Capitol Building
Location: south elevation. Artist: Hermon MacNeil.
1936 ~ George Rogers Clark Memorial ~ Hero of the American Revolution
Clark National Monument where MacNeil’s George R. Clark is housed
MacNeil’s Statue of George Rogers Clark is inside the circular dome of the Monument in Vincennes, IN. CLICK HERE for More
CLICK HERE for the National Park Service’s story of this National Monument (CLICK)
This beautifully restored dome on the prairie contains Hermon Atkins MacNeil’s heroic statue of George Rogers Clark, a Virginian who saw the importance of the West in the war effort as a whole. He persuaded Virginia’s government (and Governor Thomas Jefferson) to support his efforts; then with 200 men, he crossed the Ohio River to the Mississippi River taking Kaskaskia and Cahokia, and returning to capture Fort Sackville at Vincennes.
The following video by RATIO Architects shows the reconstruction and restoration of The George Rogers Clark Memorial roof and foundations in 2005 after decades of leakage, erosion, corrosion, stalactite formation and water damage to the steps and walkways. (length 6:24 min; Source RATIO Architects )
Thanks RATIO for restoring this monument of American history and giving us this documentation. Dan Leininger, webmaster of HermonAtkinsMacNeil.com
Treaty of Paris, by Benjamin West (1783), depicts the United States delegation at the Treaty of Paris (left to right): John Jay, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Henry Laurens, and William Temple Franklin. The British delegation refused to pose, and the painting was never completed.
The George Rogers Clark Memorial is on the sight of the British Fort Sackville of 1779. Clark and his 170 frontier men demanded surrender from British Lt., Governor Henry Hamilton by surprise and deception on Feb 25, 1779. They marshaled troops waving flags and firing rapidly as if they were a larger army. Clark’s strategies and victories in the West marked the beginning of the end of British domination in America’s western frontier and by the Treaty of Paris (1783) extended the 13 colonies westward to the Mississippi River.
Re-enactment of Fort Sackville surrender
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1940 ~ The Pony Express ~ Saint Joseph, MO
Follow the setting Sun
The Legend of the Pony Express is larger than life. The images of riders carrying pouches (mochilas) of mail from Saint Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California, (a 1900 mile route) through 186 Pony Express Stations along the route about 10 miles apart. Riders had to take an oath, must weigh less than 125 pounds, riding both day and night through sun and rain. Riders changed every 75 -100 miles or doubling that in emergencies from April 1860 to September 1961 before the transcontinental telegraph was completed.
The legend of Hermon MacNeil’s Pony Express statue is told here on 5 different stories linked on this single thread searched with “Pony Express”. (including Poncho Villa) MacNeil’s legendary statue includes:
- a black mounted action figure heading West with hair and bandana streaming,
- Four mochilas (pouches) for mail,
- a pistol on his hip,
- a Sun carved on the south side of the base symbolizing daytime and the Moon on the north side for night.
- The legend of “Poncho Villa” the wild Dakota range horse that MacNeil modeled for the muscular steed running to the sun.
Poncho Villa was an ‘outlaw’ horse tamed by Dr. S. Meredith Strong, a physician and horse lover who was 
the National President of the American Rough Riders Association, a group devoted to the preservation of the wild mustangs. He traveled thousands of miles as a lover-of-horse-flesh seeking to preserve this western heritage. He and MacNeil must have had some interesting conversations. (The newspaper photo shows Hermon MacNeil seated on the statue).
Neither rain, sleet, snow or dark of night shall keep the rider from his appointed journey. Burr!
HOTLINKS TO 1930-1940 Statues and Monuments by Hermon A. MacNeil
- 1930 “The Pilgrim Mothers and Fathers” ~ Waterbury, Connecticut
- 1930 Judge Thomas Burke Memorial, Seattle, WA
- 1931 “James Monroe” ~ sculpted for Hall of Fame of Great Americans
- 1931 Society of Medlists – “Moqui Dance for Rain”
- 1932 “Confederate Defenders” Charleston, SC
- 1932 U.S. Supreme Court – East Pediment ~ Washington DC
- 1934 “Alfred H. Terry,” Conn. Capitol, Hartford
- 1934 “John Sedgwick” Conn. Capitol, Hartford
- 1936 “George Rogers Clark” Memorial ~ Vincennes, IN
- 1940 “Pony Express” ~ St. Joseph, Missouri
