Anna Hyatt Huntington


Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington was an American sculptor and was once among New York City's most prominent sculptors. At a time when very few women were successful artists, she had a thriving career. Hyatt Huntington exhibited often, traveled widely, received critical acclaim at home and abroad, and won awards and commissions.
During the first two decades of the 20th century, Hyatt Huntington became famous for her animal sculptures, which combine vivid emotional depth with skillful realism. In 1915, she created the first public monument by a woman in New York City, outside of Central Park: Her Joan of Arc, located on Riverside Drive at 93rd Street, is also the city’s first monument dedicated to a historical woman.

Biography

Huntington was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on March 10, 1876. Her father Alpheus Hyatt was a professor of paleontology and zoology at Harvard University and MIT. He encouraged her early interest in animals and animal anatomy. Anna Hyatt first studied with Henry Hudson Kitson in Boston, who threw her out after she identified equine anatomical deficiencies in his work. Later she studied with Hermon Atkins MacNeil and Gutzon Borglum at the Art Students League of New York. In addition to these formal studies, she spent many hours doing extensive study of animals in various zoos and circuses. She was one of 250 sculptors who exhibited in the 3rd Sculpture International held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the summer of 1949. Her work was also part of the sculpture event in the art competition at the 1928 Summer Olympics.
In 1932, Huntington became one of the earliest woman artists to be elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Between the years of 1927 and 1937, Huntington contracted and survived tuberculosis.
Huntington and her husband, Archer Milton Huntington, founded Brookgreen Gardens near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. She was a member of the National Academy of Design and the National Sculpture Society. A donation of $100,000 from her and her husband underwrote the NSS Exhibition of 1929. Because of her husband's enormous wealth and the shared interests of the couple, the Huntingtons founded fourteen museums and four wildlife preserves. They also donated the land for the Collis P. Huntington State Park, consisting of approximately of land in Redding, Connecticut, to the State of Connecticut.
Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington died October 4, 1973 in Redding, Connecticut. She is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, The Bronx, New York City. Her grave is next to that of her husband Archer Milton Huntington who died on December 11, 1955.

Legacy

Her papers are held at Syracuse University, and the Archives of American Art of the Smithsonian Institution.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art listed Huntington among the foremost woman sculptors in the United States to have undertaken large, publicly commissioned works, alongside Malvina Hoffman and Evelyn Longman.
She was the aunt of the art historian A. Hyatt Mayor.

Public equestrian monuments

Her animal sculptures, figures of both life-sized and in smaller proportions, are in museums and collections throughout the United States. Hyatt Huntington’s work is now displayed in many of New York’s leading institutions and outdoor spaces, including Columbia University, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Academy of Design, the New-York Historical Society, the Hispanic Society of America, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Central Park, Riverside Park and the Bronx Zoo. She spent two years collaborating with Abastenia St. Leger Eberle to produce Man and Bull, which was exhibited at the St. Louis Exposition in 1904.
The Hispanic Society of America was founded in 1904 by her husband, Archie Huntington. Anna was responsible for the art in its courtyard,
including:
Two statues are located at the entrance to Collis P. Huntington State Park in Redding and Bethel, Connecticut: Mother Bear and Cubs and Sculpture of Wolves. The park was donated to the state of Connecticut by the Huntingtons. Other equestrian statues by Huntington greet visitors to the entrance to Redding Elementary School, the John Read Middle School, and at the Mark Twain Library. The statue at the elementary school is called Fighting Stallions and the one at the middle school is called A Tribute to the Workhorse. The sculpture at the Mark Twain Library, also called The Torch Bearers, is identical in form to the one in Madrid, but is cast in bronze and appears to be smaller.
In her Horse Trainer she enlivens the theme of the Roman marble Horse Tamers of the Quirinale, Rome, which had been taken up by Guillaume Coustou for the horses of Marly.
Huntington's Joan of Arc stands at the intersection of Riverside Drive and Ninety-third Street in Manhattan catapulted her into the international spotlight after the statue was unveiled with such dignitaries as Mina Edison, Thomas Edison's second wife.