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The occasional series of blog posts that starts this week will highlight the most important of the outdoor sculptures in New York City and provide some historical and art-historical context. For the complete sequence of sculptures, see the series of photos I’ve been posting on Instagram since August 2019. They’re in chronological order (it’s good to have a database!), with a short blurb on the subject and/or artist of each. Find other blog posts in this series, and other blog posts on outdoor sculpture in New York City, via the New York City Sculpture tag.

This post is available as a video at https://youtu.be/LNB8Siv22Gc.

1789

First: a look at the state of sculpture when the United States was new. Many of our iconic images of America’s Founding Fathers – Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson, as well as this one of Lafayette – were created by Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741-1828). Houdon could create images of young and old, statesmen and soldiers and children, so distinctively individual that you’d recognize them on the street and so lively that you’d wonder what they’re thinking. You can see Houdon’s skill in the subtle planes of Lafayette’s face and in the exquisite variation in textures of his face, hair, coat, cravat, and epaulettes. This 1932 copy of Houdon’s 1789 bust was placed in the Bronx Hall of Fame of Great Americans nearly 200 years after his death.

In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe, where monarchs, noblemen, and the wealthy could afford their services, sculptors such as Houdon thrived. But in early decades of the United States, there was little demand for sculptors. Not surprisingly, no schools or ateliers existed to offer training to aspiring sculptors. American sculptors eventually travelled to Europe to study with the top-notch sculptors there. But meanwhile, many of the earliest works erected outdoors in New York City were by European artists. For example …

1850

The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries saw the rise of Romanticism. As I said in Seismic Shifts in Subject and Style:

In the visual arts, Romanticism was largely confined to painting. Beginning with Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778), Henry Fuseli (1741-1825), and Francisco de Goya (1746-1828), artists rebelled against the “noble simplicity and quiet grandeur” that Winckelmann had advocated, and which, in the form of Neoclassicism, had swept through Europe during the late 18th century. Romantic painters focused on subjects calculated to arouse strong passions. The passions could be as positive as love or as negative as terror. The important thing was to make the viewer feel something.

Durante, Seismic Shifts in Subject and Style: Nineteenth-Century French Painting and Philosophy, Chapter 4

Sculptures of wild animals were an offshoot of Romanticism in France: showing nature red in tooth and claw was another way of eliciting strong feelings. Animaliers such as Christophe Fratin (1801-1864) and Antoine-Louis Barye (1795-1875) were early artists working in a genre that continued well into the twentieth century.

In 1863, thirteen years after Fratin sculpted it, a cast of Eagles and Prey was erected northwest of the Mall in Central Park. Olmsted, who was infuriated when roaming goats ate the Park’s newly planted greenery, probably smiled grimly at sight of this large bronze sculpture showing the gory death of a goat. Eagles and Prey was the second sculpture placed in the Park, following Schiller, which was created and dedicated in 1859. (See next week’s post.)

1853

This grave monument in the Green-Wood Cemetery honors DeWitt Clinton, who as governor of New York (1817-1822 and 1825-1828) was largely responsible for the Erie Canal. The Canal, one of the engineering feats of the early nineteenth century, transformed New York City into the East Coast’s trading hub. The reliefs on the sculpture’s base represent the construction of the Erie Canal and commerce on the canal. This is the first in a long line of New York City sculptures honoring politicians in New York and the United States.

Why is Clinton (1769-1828) wearing a toga atop his nineteenth-century business suit? Because this work is in the Neoclassical style. Neoclassicism, one of the most popular schools of sculpture in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, was thought to bring the grandeur of the Roman Republic and Roman Empire to the modern era.

Henry Kirke Brown (1814-1886) spent the early 1840s studying sculpture in Italy: one of the earliest American sculptors to do so. Although he doesn’t have the skill and scope of Houdon, he’s quite competent. We’ll see an even more ambitious work by him next week.

1853

Another thread in American sculpture is the tradition of wood carving associated with ships’ figureheads. Usually these come under the category of folk art. But in 1853, Charles Tiffany commissioned his friend Henry Frederick Metzler, a maker of figureheads, to create a figure of Atlas for the Tiffany’s store at 550 Broadway (between Prince and Spring Streets). The nine-foot-tall wooden figure, painted to look like bronze, traveled with Tiffany’s headquarters as it moved to Union Square, to 37th Street, and then to 57th Street (727 Fifth). Images of Atlas in earlier locations are here. Copies of this sculpture adorn major Tiffany locations across America.

Next week: New York’s first equestrian sculpture, and more.

More

• My Instagram account shows every outdoor sculpture in New York City, since in chronological order, with a short blurb on the subject and/or artist of each.
• 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 in print and Kindle formats. More here.
• Want wonderful art delivered weekly to your inbox? Check out my free Sunday Recommendations list and my Patreon page (free or by subscription): details here.