Blog

I’ve posted on Brookgreen Gardens before (see here), cropping the photos to show just the sculptures. But one of the marvelous features of Brookgreen is that many of the sculptures have a small garden or another area specifically designed to set them off. In this series of posts, with photos taken in early June when the gardens were full of flowers, I’m trying to give a sense of those gorgeous settings.

This is the final post in this series.

Diana, 1891

By Augustus Saint Gaudens (1848-1907), one of America’s best sculptors.

Excerpt from Artist-Entrepreneurs: Saint Gaudens, MacMonnies, and Parrish, on the original version of Diana:

This gilt figure of a naked woman balances on one leg and draws a bow. Beginning in 1891, she stood atop the second Madison Square Garden, an all-purpose pleasure palace at Madison Avenue and Twenty-Third Street.

Diana was poised forty-two feet higher than the Statue of Liberty – higher than the tallest Manhattan building. She was the first thing in Manhattan that the sun touched in the morning, and the last thing it touched at night. She was also the first outdoor sculpture in New York to be illuminated at night by electricity, and the first sculpture of a naked woman to be prominently placed outdoors in Manhattan. A few mothers apparently covered the eyes of their children when passing by, but most New Yorkers loved the sculpture.

It’s difficult to imagine Diana any other way, but in the original version she flaunted a single curl of drapery. Diana was designed as a weathervane, and the curl of drapery helped her spin.

Saint Gaudens and architect Stanford White soon decided the original version was too large for the building. They removed it temporarily to one of the buildings at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The fire that ripped through the fairgrounds also destroyed the sculpture.

On Madison Square Garden, a smaller Diana—thirteen feet rather than eighteen—was erected. That one eventually ended up in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

For other casts of this Diana, see this post.

Fountain of the Muses, 1955

This group by Carl Milles (1875-1955) includes figures representing a poet, architect, musician, painter, sculptor, the goddess Aganippe, a centaur, and a faun. Milles’s description of the fountain’s symbolism is quoted on Brookgreen’s site.

Samson and the Lion, 1949

By Gleb W. Derujinsky (1888-1975). This is a view from a distance of the sculpture in the fabulous Palmetto Garden: as often at Brookgreen, the sculpture gains by being given plenty of space. For a close-up photo of the sculpture, see here.

Griffin, 1917

By Paul Manship (1885-1966), creator of Prometheus at Rockefeller Center and many, many other works. Manship was one of the leading American sculptors of the twentieth century. Searching “Manship” on my site will show you many of his works in New York City.

Brookgreen’s pair of griffins was part of a group of sculpture created by Manship for Immergruen, the estate of steel industrialist Charles M. Schwab at Loretto, Pennsylvania. The griffins remind me vividly of a pair of sphinxes by Manship at the Untermyer Garden in Yonkers. For photos of those, scroll down on this post to the heading “Happy ending in progress”.

Diana of the Chase, 1922

By Anna Hyatt Huntington. Huntington’s Young Diana, ca. 1924, is in the outdoor sculpture gallery at Brookgreen: see this post. I happen to like Young Diana better, but I’m also fond of this one.

Lions, 1930

By Anna Hyatt Huntington. Marble versions of these guardians are at the entrance to the Hispanic Society of America in New York City. For more on Huntington’s sculptures at the HSA, see here.

The globes between the paws of the lions show two different hemispheres.

More

• For more of my posts on Brookgreen, click here. The official site is here.
• In Getting More Enjoyment from Sculpture You Love, I demonstrate a method for looking at sculptures in detail, in depth, and on your own. Learn to enjoy your favorite sculptures more, and find new favorites. Available on Amazon print and Kindle formats.
• Want wonderful art delivered weekly to your inbox? Check out my free Sunday Recommendations list and rewards for recurring support: details here.