One of the most successful women artists of her generation, Bessie Potter Vonnoh (1872‱955) specialized in sculpted images of women and children that are both accomplished and moving. At a time when the field of American sculpture was dominated by male sculptors seeking commissions for large, public monuments, she excelled by designing intimate works for domestic interiors and gardens.
By making first-rate, aesthetic pieces accessible to wide audiences, she succeeded in elevating the quality and appeal of small bronze, marble and terracotta sculptures. Celebrating Impressionist figures and scenes of domestic life, she focused on themes glorifying such cherished American ideals as happy mothers, innocent children and young women dancing, reading and enjoying nature.
Coming to the fore at a time when industrialization, urbanization and the women’s rights movement encouraged females to enter into all aspects of modern life, she contributed to the dramatic transformation of American society. As a working woman, Vonnoh faced her share of prejudice. In time, she came to embody the “New Woman” in the era when women moved beyond their traditional domestic roles into previously male-dominated public spheres. Ironically, at the same time, her characteristic imagery †blissful domestic life †supported conventional ideas of women as icons of beauty and moral guardians of the home.
Vonnoh brought a compelling eye for aesthetic expressiveness to her depiction of reassuring themes. Her astute modeling, deft compositions and graceful linear designs earned the respect of her colleagues, art critics and fans among museums and collectors.
A much-admired and avidly collected sculptor in her day, Vonnoh’s name and work have faded from public view. Her resurrection has culminated in a welcome retrospective of her oeuvre, “Bessie Potter Vonnoh: Sculptor of Women,” organized by Julie Aronson, curator at the Cincinnati Art Museum. Already seen at the Florence Griswold Museum, it is on view at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts from February 7 through May 10, and at the Cincinnati Art Museum June 6 to September 6. Showcasing 35 of her best pieces, it will examine her distinctive achievements and explore her place as a role model for female artists.
Born in St Louis and raised in Chicago, Bessie Potter as a youngster was immobilized for years by a series of puzzling illnesses. She recovered, but remained physically small, reaching a height of only 4 feet, 8 inches. After her recovery, in school she took up the physical activity of modeling in clay.
At the age of 14, Potter began studies at the Art Institute of Chicago under noted French-trained sculptor Lorado Taft (1860‱936), becoming one of his “white rabbits.” But she was not cut out to be a timid bunny, and after assisting Taft in making sculpture for the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, she opened her own Chicago studio. There she created a stir with a series of lively portrait statuettes in tinted plaster of women, which she called “Potterines.” They were modeled after everyday life subjects of Impressionist painters.
In 1895, Potter rode the popularity of the Potterines to Paris, where she met and visited the studio of the master of expressive sculpture, Auguste Rodin, who greatly influenced her work. The French sculptor’s impact was evident when, after returning to Chicago, she achieved fame with the first of her masterpieces, “A Young Mother,” modeled 1896, an animated, tabletop-size bronze piece of a woman cradling her infant. The only work by an American woman to win a medal at the Paris Exposition of 1900, it became one of Potter’s most popular sculptures.
The theme of motherhood, a constant throughout her career, was a subject relevant to modern American life that endowed her work with the age-old ideal of moral and spiritual significance. Such work, transcending the commonplace by bearing deep meaning, was the kind most admired by Potter/Vonnoh’s generation. As curator Aronson observes, “A celebration of youth and healthfulness&⁛”A Young Mother”] elevated all that seemed right, in a time marked by runaway social and technological change.”
This success was followed by another characteristic image, “Girl Dancing,” modeled 1897, which also reflected the vibrancy and refinement of Rodin’s modeling. The contemporary young woman dancing in a romantic, old-fashioned gauzy skirt and petticoat symbolized the sculptor’s interest in both the present and past.
In 1898, Potter moved to New York City, a hotbed of Gilded Age art. In “A Study,” modeled around 1898, she created a diminutive, intimate glimpse of a mother nursing.
The following year, she married Impressionist painter Robert W. Vonnoh (1858‱933). Around this time most women artists who married gave up their careers to become homemakers. Cecelia Beaux and Mary Cassatt, two outstanding painters who were Potter’s contemporaries, stayed single in order to concentrate on their careers.
Robert Vonnoh, recognizing the quality and potential of Bessie’s work, became a mentor, adviser and supporter of her independent career. In encouraging her appreciation of Impressionism, he influenced her concentration on contemporary subjects and vigorous modeling. For many years the Vonnohs divided their time between France and New York City, summering in Old Lyme, Conn.
Early on, Bessie Vonnoh, capitalizing on the contemporary idea that women artists, because of their maternal instincts, were temperamentally suited to depict children †regardless of the fact that she never had children of her own †specialized in portraits of youngsters. “Hester,” modeled 1901, portraying the 4-year-old daughter of fellow sculptor Alexander Phimister Proctor, conveys the uncertainties of childhood.
Two notable bronzes, modeled soon after the turn of the Twentieth Century, epitomize Vonnoh’s continuing commitment to images of motherhood. “Enthroned,” modeled 1902, shows a mother regally ensconced in a thronelike chair, with a “halo” behind her head and holding three children. It reflects the sculptor’s efforts to convey the dignity and majesty of maternity, consistent with contemporary thinking that “In every home, the mother is queen, enthroned in the hearts of her loving children.”
Similarly, “A Modern Madonna,” 1904, portrays Vonnoh’s close friend and Old Lyme neighbor, artist Helen Savier DuMond (wife of painter Frank Vincent DuMond), affectionately holding her infant son.
For a few years, attracted by the potential of their pebbly texture and muted colors for suggestive effects, Vonnoh worked in terracotta, creating sculptures from earth clays fired to make them hard. In line with tradition, she used terracotta for intimate, spontaneous images, as in “Young Woman Reading,” circa 1910.
During summers in Old Lyme just before World War I, the Vonnohs became friends of President Woodrow Wilson and his family, particularly his wife, Ellen, who was a trained painter, and their handsome daughter, Jessie. The Vonnohs attended the White House wedding of the latter to Episcopal priest Francis B. Sayre. In a substantial bronze, measuring 16 by 61/8 by 7 inches, the president’s daughter appears elegant and stately in a long Grecian costume. Vonnoh later modeled a marble bust of Jessie that delineated her fine facial features. Vonnoh was pleased when these works and others by her were displayed in the Red Room of the White House.
Seeking to tap into the market for sculpture to decorate the increasing number of large formal gardens, in 1913, Vonnoh made her first garden piece, “Water Lilies,” depicting a slender, nude boy balancing on a rock.
That same year she created a graceful table fountain, “The Intruder,” in which a gowned, chaste maiden’s bath has been interrupted by the entrance of a turtle on the opposite side of a basin. These works proved popular, but it was not until 1920 that she focused on garden and outdoor statuary.
In contrast to earlier in her career, Vonnoh received two prestigious public garden commissions: “The Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Bird Fountain,” 1923′7, for a National Audubon bird sanctuary near the president’s grave at Oyster Bay on Long Island, for which she molded a standing girl holding a basin for feeding birds and a seated boy feeding animals and birds from a bowl.
The second, the “Francis Hodgson Burnett Memorial,” modeled 1928, was a tribute in bronze to the author of children’s books, such as The Secret Garden and Little Lord Fauntleroy , for the Conservatory Garden in New York City’s Central Park. It featured a reclining, Pan-like boy playing the flute and a standing woodland nymphlike girl holding a bowl with a bird in it.
To raise needed funds for the statue, the Roman Bronze Works foundry cast six bronze replicas of the standing girl that were to be sold. The replica in the exhibition stood for years outdoors in a park in Batavia, N.Y.
Closely related to the garden pieces Vonnoh produced in the 1920s were larger bronze sculptures, often featuring nude figures. A complex and compelling multifigure work, “Allegresse,” which was modeled in 1920, bears a title that is the French word for gaiety, joy or mirth. Based on poses of professional dancers in her studio and the Three Graces from antiquity, three nude or partially nude young women dance lightheartedly in an image of fragile equilibrium.
“Allegresse” won a gold medal at the National Academy of Design, which led to Vonnoh joining her husband as a full member †the first married couple to be so honored.
Toward the end of the 1920s, Vonnoh seemed to lose interest in the exhausting work of sculpture and her output decreased noticeably. Yet, creating sculpture was almost a compulsion with her. As Aronson puts it, “For Vonnoh, art and personal fulfillment were inextricably entwined, [so] she continued to work until she was no longer able.”
By the late 1930s, Vonnoh was faced with a shift in popular tastes from naturalistic sculpture toward modern streamlined and abstract styles that were not to her liking. She worked sporadically until 1950, when she stopped sculpting.
She died in 1955 and is buried near her mother and husband in Duck River Cemetery in Old Lyme. Fellow sculptor Wheeler Williams eulogized Vonnoh as a pioneering and successful woman artist, noting, “In addition to her very great talent, she was a most wonderful person&”
By the time of her death Bessie Potter Vonnoh had fallen out of favor with a public committed to Modernism, but she commanded respect as the senior member of the National Sculpture Society †a grande dame of American sculpture.
“During her lifetime,” says Aronson, “Vonnoh was considered a unique and significant contributor to the field of American sculpture.” Her work with bronze statuettes has influenced sculptors ever since. Moreover, she deserves great credit for serving as a role model and for breeching institutional barriers to other women artists.
The illustrated 287-page catalog, written by Aronson (with an essay by Janis Conner on the casting of Vonnoh’s early bronzes) is packed with interesting insights. Published by Ohio University Press with Cincinnati Art Museum, it sells for $39.95 softcover.
The Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts is at One Museum Drive. For information, 334-240-4333 or www.mmfa.org .
