Arts and Letters

Paul Manship was born on Christmas Day of 1885 in St. Paul, Minnesota, and died eighty years later in New York City. I first met him at the American Academy in Rome and there we formed a friendship which survived the stresses of more than fifty years. At that time Paul was slim, short, and sturdy, his head covered with a fuzz of hair on its way to baldness. His power of concentration was notable and his ardor for all things connected with sculpture was as hot as that of a beagle after a rabbit.

Manship was a lyric sculptor whose humor enlivened everything he touched. He came back from Rome in 1912 and brought with him a series of small figure pieces which he had made there. The figures had gaiety, a flower-like grace, and flawless execution.

With the notable exception of the "Bacchante" of Frederick MacMonnies, the note of gaiety had been absent from American sculpture and when Manship exhibited his carefree work at the Architectural League of New York, the delighted architects, painters, and sculptors bought out the collection. Here was the man for whom they had been looking. One of them turned poetic and compared Manship's abundance of talent and energy to the richness of nature in the spring of the year. The League exhibition was followed by a large show at a commercial gallery which also sold out, launching the young sculptor on a successful career of fifty years.

Among the admirable early works were the "Girl and Gazelles," "Ride a Cock Horse," and the "Centaur and Dryad"; yet the portrait of his baby, "Pauline Seven Days Old," surpassed them all in tenderness and depth of emotion. Her small half-formed face looks with puzzled wonder at an unknown world, and the delicacy of the tiny fingers searching for her wrapping is infinitely touching.

Manship's power of concentration was complete. While at work he lived isolated in a world where nothing could touch him, yet when the spasm passed he emerged from his dream, avid for fun and amusement. His energy and curiosity seemed to know no limits; his brain and fingers were always at work. In the evenings he busied himself making designs for a statue or modeling a figurine in wax, while his wife, Isabel, read to him ponderous books on the art of India, Cambodia, and China. In his occasional low moments she bolstered his ego with tenderness and understanding.

The technical problems of sculpture fascinated Manship and he did not rest until he mastered them and could direct with authority even the bronze founders. For relaxation he made small portrait medallions of his friends and decorated the reverse side with humorous designs symbolic of their tastes or character. The study of Oriental art in the museums was another relaxation but he believed his early and best inspiration came from the study of Greek vases in Italy.

Manship delighted in drawing or modeling birds and animals, and his lordly bronze gates to the Bronx Zoo are rich in feline strength, the sad absurdity of the apes, and the amusing pomp and solemnity of the ibis, the crane, and the heron. He kept no pets at home or in his studio from apprehension that their fur or feathers might provoke his recurring asthma.

The happiest and most fertile of his friendships was with Eric Gugler whose energy and talent in architecture was a mate to his own sculpture. Laughing, smoking, and drinking together, they planned many imaginative projects. Their two most successful collaborations were the American War Memorial at Anzio near Rome and the National Memorial to Theodore Roosevelt in Washington, D.C. At Anzio the memorial, long, low, and white, shimmers within a grove of stone pine, its exterior decorated with reliefs by Manship and in the interior court stand twin figures of youthful soldiers typifying comradeship in war.

The Theodore Roosevelt Memorial is on a small island in the Potomac River below the Georgetown Bridge. Its only access is a narrow causeway for pedestrians, and the island will be a bird sanctuary. By cutting an opening to the sky in the forest a delightful and unique setting was achieved for Manship's statue of Theodore Roosevelt. It will be his last important public memorial. The bronze is being shipped from Italy now and it will be set in place in the spring.

Manship was staunch and discerning in his personal relations. His life was crowded with honors. He lent himself generously to many responsibilities and was past president of our own Academy, the Century Association, and the National Sculpture Society. At his death he was a trustee of the American Academy in Rome, the chairman of the Smithsonian Commission of fine arts, and trustee of the Saint-Gaudens Museum at Cornish, New Hampshire.

Paul was little given to making apothegms, but one I remember well: "The genius is the brute with the delicate touch."