Frederick William MacMonnies
Frederick William MacMonnies
1863 - 1937
American sculptor and painter. During his apprenticeship in New York (1880–84) with Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who discovered and encouraged his talent, he rose from menial helper to assistant, studying in the evenings at Cooper Union and the National Academy of Design. Through Saint-Gaudens he met two architects who later became invaluable colleagues: Stanford White and Charles F. McKim, who lent him money in 1884 to go to Paris. He studied drawing at Colarossi’s then went to Munich, attending drawing and portrait classes at the Akademie (1884–5) and worked for Saint-Gaudens again (1885–6). In Paris he studied sculpture with Alexandre Falguière at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, winning the Prix d’atelier in 1887 and 1888, worked in Antonin Mercié’s studio, became Falguière’s assistant and won honourable mention at the Salon of 1889 with a life-size Diana (plaster; untraced) modelled in Falguière’s fluid manner.
Success brought MacMonnies American commissions and the independence to open his own studio. He created his first fanciful life-size fountain figures for country estates, Pan of Rohallion (1890; Asadur Azapian priv. col., on loan New York, Met.) and Young Faun with Heron (1890; Stockbridge, MA, ‘Naumkeag’, Trustees of Reservations). These buoyant mythological creatures with vibrant surfaces in the Art Nouveau style introduced fountain sculpture as a new genre in America and inspired a whole generation of sculptors, many of whom were his students. From 1890 MacMonnies had a lucrative bronze production of these and more serious works in bronze statuettes of varying sizes, employing studio assistants and several French and American foundries. In 1891 he was the first American to be awarded a second-class medal at the Paris Salon. Of his two entries, the straightforward naturalism of his over life-size James S. T. Stranahan (bronze, 1891; Brooklyn, NY, Prospect Park) won popular approval and the monumental Nathan Hale (bronze, 1891; New York, City Hall Park), although criticized for its lack of finish and for being ‘too picturesque’, achieved lasting success as a new expression of dramatic, uplifting sculpture. The plastic quality animating the Impressionist surface of this imaginary portrait heightens the emotion of the hero’s last moment.
MacMonnies had great success at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago with the 39-figure ensemble, Columbian Fountain, including the central group, Barge of State (destr.), a colossal temporary fountain made of staff (plaster and straw). This allegorical set-piece of Beaux-Arts bravura became an icon of the American Renaissance. Equally renowned, his bronze, over life-size Bacchante and Infant Faun (1893; New York, Met.), unveiled in 1896 at the Boston Public Library (see [not available online]), scandalized Bostonians and had to be removed. When McKim presented it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the realistic female nude attracted widespread attention. In the late 1890s MacMonnies returned to painting and subsequently alternated between the two media. Like his close friend James McNeill Whistler and the Impressionists, he admired the work of Diego Velázquez, whose paintings he copied at the Prado in Madrid in 1904. MacMonnies taught drawing with Whistler at the Académie Carmen and for almost two decades was a popular teacher of American artists in Paris and at his Giverny estate. His Self-portrait with Lilac Boutonnière (1898–1903; Washington, DC, N.P.G.) owes much to Velázquez, and his full-length portrait of May Palmer (1901–2; Bennington, VT, Mus.) displays a skill ranking with major contemporary portrait painters like his friend John Singer Sargent and Giovanni Boldini.
MacMonnies’s most ambitious public monuments in the ten years following 1893 were for Prospect Park in Brooklyn, NY. The Quadriga and Army and Navy groups for the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Arch (1898–1901; in situ) typify nationalistic outpourings in full-blown Beaux-Arts style. His uniquely eclectic French style merged neo-Baroque with Art Nouveau whiplash curves in the heroic bronze gatepost groups Horse Tamers (1898; in situ) for which MacMonnies was awarded a grand prize at the Exposition Universelle of 1900 in Paris. These near-mirror pairs of a mounted rider restraining another rearing horse were intended to represent man’s mind pitted against brute force. He modelled them from live prancing horses at his Paris and Giverny studios. He used this technique for the bronze equestrian statues of General Henry W. Slocum (1902; Brooklyn, NY, Grand Army Plaza) and Major George B. McClellan (1906; Washington, DC, Connecticut Avenue), made for a Congressional commission initiated by Civil War veterans. The historical details of dress and regalia were carefully researched, a hallmark of his sculpture.
MacMonnies’s work never reflected modernist currents, despite his shift to direct carving in marble and the later influence of Auguste Rodin. On his return to New York at the end of 1915, he made another controversial work, Civic Virtue (1909–22), an over life-size marble male nude with two mermaid ‘Vices’ writhing at his feet. Public indignation forced its removal from City Hall Park, New York, to a plaza flanking Queens Borough Hall, New York. His last and most colossal monument was the 22 m high Marne Battle Memorial (or Monument américain) (1916–32; Meaux), the American nation’s gift to France in return for the Statue of Liberty (New York Harbor). The output of his years in New York included several dozen portrait busts in bronze, marble and oils. His first wife, Mary Fairchild MacMonnies Low (1858–1946), was a painter. [Ethelyn Adina Gordon. "MacMonnies, Frederick William." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed September 9, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T052933.]
Person TypeIndividual
Terms
