Arts and Letters

Katharine Lane Weems, an eminent animalier, was born in 1899, elected to the Institute in 1952, and died in 1989 at the age of 89.

All of us very much regret that out tribute to her could not have been prepared by someone who knew her and her work personally. Unfortunately, the notable sculptors and artists, members of the Academy-Institute with whom she was closely identified, such as Anna Hyatt Huntington, Paul Manship, Malvina Hoffman, and Brenda Putnam, all predeceased her. Hence it devolves on us, who know her only by reputation by having read her delightfully touching autobiography entitled Odds Were Against Me—a title to which some of us might add a grumpy "ha"—and the insightful study of her work by Louise Todd Ambler, curator of Harvard's Portrait Collection.

"K," as she was known to her family and friends, was born into a wealthy, socially prominent and highly intellectual Boston family. Her father, Gardiner Martin Lane, was a senior partner of Lee Higginson & Company and was president of the Board of Trustees of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts from 1907 until his death seven years later. His father was Pope Professor of Latin at Harvard. The Lanes were lineal descendants of the Gardiners of New York's Gardiner Island. Her maternal grandfather, Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve (1831-1924), was professor of Greek at Johns Hopkins University and was long regarded as America's preeminent classicist. He was elected to the Institute in 1906 and two years later, along with his very good friend and so to speak his boss, the president of Johns Hopkins University, Daniel Coit Gilman, was elected to the Academy.

K, the granddaughter of these two classicists, was not educated in the classics but was sent to Miss May's School for Girls where she was taught how to take her proper place in Boston society. In addition she also learned dancing, singing, piano, French, German, history of painting, bridge, horseback riding, and golf. She began to keep a diary shortly before her fourteenth birthday, and she continued until about 1960 when she presented these journals to the New England Center of the Archives of American Art of the Smithsonian Institution.

K's interest in drawing and modeling manifested itself early on. Her first diary entries speak of showing her drawings to a Mrs. Tyng, her drawing teacher at Miss May's School. When she was given some modeling clay, she began to model the people and the pets with whom she grew up and she continued drawing many of the things she saw around her. In the summer of 1914, she went to Europe with her parents and maternal grandparents and quite a number of drawings from that period survive. The highlight of her trip seems to have been a visit to John Singer Sargent's studio which quite impressed her. Her father died in the fall of 1914 shortly after the family returned from Europe and we might safely say that her childhood came to an end at this moment. On the last day of that year she wrote: "Here I end this year of joy and sorrow which has been in many respects the most eventful of the fifteen years I have lived." Quite a self-conscious summing-up for a sheltered girl of fifteen. She continued to draw and model, and in 1918 received her first criticism from a professional sculptor, Anna Hyatt (later Huntington) who became her lifelong friend and enthusiastically encouraged K to continue working.

In 1919 she began serious study with Charles Grafly, generally considered as America's preeminent teacher of sculpture. He came to Boston regularly from Philadelphia to criticize the work of his Boston students at the School of the Museum of the Fine Arts. At the outset, Grafly was rather sparing with his praise but gradually became more and more encouraging which pleased her.

K's first showing was in 1920, a small bronze entitled, Rollo—An English Bull Terrier, at the Gallery on the Moors in Gloucester. From that time on until the end of her life, she exhibited regularly, fulfilled many commissions, both private and public, and was awarded many honors. She gradually became exclusively an animal sculptor specializing in groups of animals. She completed one of her largest groups entitled Dolphins of the Sea, for the New England Aquarium on May 8, 1979 when she was eighty years old—quite in the tradition of other sculptors who worked late in life such as Michelangelo and Rodin. Her largest and best-known work is a frieze, 400 feet long, carved in the brick facade of the biological laboratories of Harvard University. She established her national reputation when her sculpture of a whippet, Narcisse Noir, was awarded the George D. Weidner Memorial Gold Medal at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. In 1947 she married F. Tarrington Weems of New York and Virginia. He died in 1966.

These are the cold facts and do not at all do justice to the fascinating personality she must have been. Nor do these facts provide an inkling to that enigmatic title of her book, Odds Were Against Me.

What were these odds? She was talented, wealthy, beautiful, highly honored, beloved by her family and friends, constantly supported by her professional colleagues, and very happily married. What were these odds? Each of us is free to guess, but then I am not into psycho-biography.