Christian Petersen

Fountain of Four Seasons with the Iowa State University campanile in the background.

Christian Petersen (1885-1961) was a Danish-born American sculptor and university teacher. He was the first permanent artist in residence at a U.S. college or university,^[1] and he is noted for the large body of sculpture associated with a single place, Iowa State College, now Iowa State University.

Biography

Born in Denmark, he emigrated the United States in 1894 with his parents. In 1900 he became an apprentice die cutter and later attended the Fawcett School of Design and the Rhode Island School of Design. He joined the Art Students League of New York, and studied with leading artists there, including Henry Hudson Kitson and George Brant Bridgeman. He worked as a die cutter at the Robins Company in Attleboro, Massachusetts and continued to sculpt, gaining commissions for works in the East and Midwest through Kitson's connections.^[2]

At the start of the Great Depression he moved to the Midwest, and eventually took a job working for Grant Wood in the Public Works of Art Project headquartered in Iowa City, Iowa. Through a WPA commission to create relief sculptures for the Dairy Industry Building at Iowa State College in Ames, Iowa, he became acquainted with the college president, who appointed him Sculptor in Residence in 1935. This was the first known instance of an artist in residence at a US university. Petersen was appointed Associate Professor and retired in 1955.^[2]

He was married to Emma L. Hoenicke from 1908 to 1928, with whom he had three children, Helene, Lawrence, and Ruth. He married Charlotte Garvey in 1931, and had a daughter Mary Charlotte in 1936.^[2]

Selected works

Head of Christ, in Saint Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church, Ames, Iowa

• History of Dairying Mural(1933-34)Fact Sheet
• Gentle Doctor (1936) Fact Sheet
• Three Athletes (1936)
• Library Boy and Girl (1944-1945)
• Fountain of Four Seasons (1941)Fact Sheet
• Flood (1938)
• Soon After Flood (1939)
• Old Woman in Prayer (1940)
• Madonna of the Prairie (1941)
• Marriage Ring (1942)
• The Marriage Ring (1942)
• The Price of Victory (1944)
• Library Boy & Girl (1944)
• Conversations (1945-1955)
• Viking (1946)
• George Washington Carver (1949)
• Christ with Bound Hands (1950)
• Attleboro War Chest (1918), unlocated
• Tigers (1920), unlocated, Bronze, approximately 24 x 18 x 40 (61 x 45.7 x 101.6)

A pair of felines commissioned for an entrance gate to the Charles J. Davol Estate in North Kingstown, Rhode Island.

Additional information on works of art by Christian Petersen

Legacy

Petersen's sculpture is predominantly Neoclassical and beaux arts in style, and he virulently denounced modernism. He especially admired Augustus Saint-Gaudens' reliefs and war memorials. But he also included some gestures toward modernism in his relief sculptures, perhaps under the influence of Grant Wood.^[1]

His large scale sculpture has been the object of numerous restoration projects at Iowa State University, to preserve his public art legacy.^[3] Other of his works are collected in the Christian Petersen Museum, in the restored Morrill Building on the campus.

Though his major works consist primarily of public art at Iowa State University and the surrounding community, his early work has received recent attention, including a retrospective exhibition in 2006 of his work from the 1910s and 1920s done at the Art Students League, in Rhode Island, Boston, and Attleboro, MA. Many of these early works of art are unlocated and Iowa State University Museums is actively searching for the sculptures or information leading to their location. ^[1]

Quotations

• “An artist is one of you. Very much one of you. He must be in your hearts, and you in his.”

• "A number of years ago, I had the feeling that the center of culture would eventually find itself in the Middlewest. I felt the east has so much conscious culture that it was subject to spells of indigestion-and it was taking to 'isms' as some folks take to patent medicines."

• "Here in the midwest, I felt folks would be more natural, and I have found it to be so in the main...So judge for yourself. Create an American art, here in the rich soil of the middlewest, where America has its roots. Here shall be the soil and the seed and the strength of art."

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} Delong, Lea (2007). Christian Petersen: Urban Artist, 1900-1934. University Museums, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa. pp. 25–34. ISBN 0-9777494-1-X. 
2. ^ ^{a b c} "Christian Petersen Papers, Iowa State University Library". 2008-07-07. http://www.lib.iastate.edu/arch/rgrp/26-2-52.html. Retrieved 2008-08-21 
3. ^ "Outdoor Petersen sculpture is ready to be a pool again" (Press release). Inside Iowa State. 2005-10-04. http://www.iastate.edu/Inside/05/1104/fountain.shtml. Retrieved 2008-08-22. 

• Christian Petersen Remembered by Patricia Bliss, Iowa State Press, November 1, 1986 (ISBN 0-8138-1346-8)
• Christian Petersen: Sculptor by Lea Delong & Patricia Bliss, Iowa State University Press, August 1, 2000 (ISBN 0-8138-2946-1)

External links

• Christian Petersen Art Museum
• [1] Christian Petersen - Biography, Timeline, and Publications on by University Museums, Iowa State University]
• Christian Petersen in the Smithsonian Institution Research Information System (SIRIS)
• Christian Petersen Exhibit. Special Collections Department, Iowa State University Library
• Article on Petersen in Roffle Haus (an ISU Wiki)

Persondata
Name	Petersen, Christian
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1885
Place of birth
Date of death	1961
Place of death