Arts and Letters

Mahonri Young was both painter and sculptor, while down at the roots of his being there lived an illustrator and a teller of stories. His drawings, paintings, and sculpture are all vigorous narratives. He conceived a work of art as "a world you could read and into which you could look," and said: "Most modern pictures haven't enough in them. All the pieces by the great masters are filled with things." Then, pointing to one of his own drawings, "Look at that drawing there. All the birds in the marsh are recognizable as definite species, ibis or terns, and down in the corner are some mudhens. Well, it's just that that makes a picture."

The power to fill his work with "things" came from his passion for drawing. A responsive pencil or fountain-pen was always in his hand as he jotted down the record of his universe. He realized the importance of the record and preserved in his studio an impressive array of sketch books filled with masterly drawings whose subject-matter attest his wide sympathies and interests. At random, I recall drawings of oxen straining at the yoke, Indian girls gathering wood by the river, the bustle of a Parisian street, the clamor of fairs and horse races, a quiet garden, prize-fighters, and the noble sweep of the plains and hills of Utah. These sketch books are "Hon" in essence. His alert eyes missed little that came his way and all he saw he seized and captured.

Mahonri came of a notable breed, the Youngs of Utah. His grandfather was the great Brigham and he took just pride in his ancestry. He had intimations of the Latter Day Saints in his own character, for he was frugal, forthright, courageous, and cheerful under adversity. Although not a practicing Mormon, the influences of his youth had a hold upon him, for on the occasion when I went with him to visit the scenes of Joseph Smith's visions in Western New York, he listened to the recitals of those supernal visitations with rapt and moving concentration. However, he made free with tea and coffee and dearly loved the grape. I well remember a bacchic moment on the terrace of a café at Beaune, when, as he tinted a freshly-made drawing with the ruby fluid, he sang the praises of our bottle with the fire and emphasis of Rabelais.

Mahonri enjoyed playing up the Mormon background and the artistic proclivities of the Young family. They bought the best pictures they could find; his grandfather created a fresh style of architecture, the Brighamesque, and his father drew and carved tools. He had a happy boyhood at the Deseret Woolen Mills which his father owned and remembered with affection the walled garden of their house. At his home, the life of the Old West paraded before him, for Utah was a crossroads of the Continent, from California to Missouri, from Montana to New Mexico, and he studied and noted an incomparable number of now vanished types of men and of human behavior.

He made his first drawings as he recovered from appendicitis. His schooling stopped at eighteen and he then studied drawing at the University of Utah. He paid his way by sweeping out a bicycle shop twice a day, and by making drawings for the newspapers. Each week he put by something from his small earnings, and when he was twenty-one, came to New York on the money he had saved.

Mahonri came East in hopes of receiving better instruction in art than he could obtain in Utah, but he soon perceived that in that respect the Art Students League could do little more for him than the University had done, for, as he afterwards said: "In art schools drawing is studied but no art is taught." So he set about studying the mysteries of art by himself. He lived in museums among the masterpieces, he read every art book upon which he could lay his hands, pondered and judged and gradually a conception of the kind of work he wished to do took form. Illumination sometimes came to him from the chance word spoken by a friend, a word which for Mahonri took on weight and meaning. "Exactly," he said, "like a seed dropped on the right piece of earth. The seed might be dropped by a carrion crow, or maybe by a horticulturist, but it was the right seed and it hit the right piece of earth at the right time and it grew into a great big tree."

Mahonri's ideals in sculpture did not lead him to despise humbler forms of art such as a statue in butter for the Utah State Fair. One commission of this sort which he enjoyed was modelling a life-sized figure called "The Most Beautiful Legs in the World," designed to promote the sales of Phoenix Hosiery. Florenz Ziegfeld, the all-time expert on legs, chose the model, and it was arranged that Legs should pose for Mahonri every morning from ten to twelve. But the telephone upset these careful arrangements, and one morning after the beautiful girl had answered twenty-three telephone calls asking for dates, Hon gave up and finished the statue from memory.

Commercial work was sometimes a necessity, for until middle life, Mahonri's finances were fluctuating and unsure. As he put it, "I was never down and out, but I was close to it." One dark day he told his worries to Gifford Beal and Gifford, who happened to be in funds, pressed a thousand dollars on him. Mahonri did not accept the money, but from then on his luck changed. The Museum of Natural History ordered an important Indian group and the Elders at Salt Lake woke up to the fact that they had bred an eminent sculptor and commissioned the Sea Gull Monument for the grounds of the Tabernacle. This monument confirmed his reputation as a sculptor, which had had a slow and healthy growth throughout the country, along with appreciation of his drawings and etchings.

In reminiscent mood Hon would sometimes say that he hung everything in his life on three pegs, Art, History, and the West. These pegs found impressive expression in his most important work, the Mormon Centenary Monument. The monument is sculpture in which we read the moving story of Utah from the time of the Spanish explorers and the early Mountain Men to the moment when Brigham Young thumped his gold-headed cane on the ground and exclaimed "This is the place!" The monument is nobly placed and is a tribute worthy a brave people.

Mahonri married twice. His first wife, the mother of his children, was Celia Sharp. Many years after her death he married Dorothy Weir, the lovely and amiable daughter of J. Alden Weir. Life with her on the Branchville Hills was the most serene and untroubled portion of Mahonri's existence. His children were settled, his talents recognized, financial troubles were behind him and he basked in an Indian Summer of the spirit.

Mahonri was of middle height and of a rotund figure. In later life his appearance reminded me somewhat of good Ben Franklin. Next to making a drawing, he loved to eat and to converse. He was a noble trencherman. His talk was Johnsonian in its copious flow and wealth of information. He was never happier than when he drew a circle of listeners about him in a Paris café or at the Century Club in New York, and at such times ideas rose in his well-furnished mind which were capable of bearing fruit if the minds of his listeners proved fertile ground.

His sympathies were wide, his heart was kind, he was the most democratic of men and a friend worth having.