Paul Manship

Paul Manship
Paul Manship, Chairman of the New York City Council for Art Week, opens the meeting held Thursday evening, October 16, 1941, at the Architectural League
Born	December 24, 1885(1885-12-24)
Died	January 28, 1966(1966-01-28) (aged 80)
Nationality	American
Field	Sculpture

Paul Howard Manship (December 24, 1885 – January 28, 1966) was an American sculptor.

Life

Manship began his art studies at the St. Paul School of Art in Minnesota. From there he moved to Philadelphia and continued his education at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Following that he migrated to New York City where he enrolled in the Art Students League of New York, studying anatomy with George Bridgman and modeling under Hermon Atkins MacNeil. From 1905 to 1907 he served as an assistant to sculptor Solon Borglum and spent the two years after that studying with Charles Grafly and assisting Isidore Konti.

In 1909, at Konti's urging, he entered the competition for, and won, the highly sought-after Prix de Rome and shortly thereafter decamped for Rome where he attended the American Academy from 1909 until 1912. While in Europe he became increasingly interested in Archaic art, his own work began to take on some archaic features, and he became more and more attracted to classical subjects. He also developed an interest in classical sculpture of India, and traces of that influence can be observed in his work (see "Dancer and Gazelles" in Gallery). Manship was one of the first artists to become aware of the vast scope of art history being newly excavated at the time and became intensely interested in Egyptian, Assyrian and pre-classical Greek sculpture.

Prometheus at Rockefeller Center

When he returned to America from his European sojourn, Manship found that his style was attractive to both modernists and conservatives. His simplification of line and detail appealed to those who wished to move beyond the Beaux-Arts classical realism prevalent in the day. Also, his view of and use of a more traditional "beauty" as well as an avoidance of the more radical and abstract trends in art made his works attractive to more conservative art collectors. Manship's work is often considered to be a major precursor to Art Deco.

Manship produced over 700 works and always employed assistants of the highest quality. At least two of them, Gaston Lachaise and Leo Friedlander, went on to create significant places for themselves in the history of American sculpture.

Although not known as a portraitist, he did produce statues and busts of Theodore Roosevelt, Samuel Osgood, John D. Rockefeller, Robert Frost, Gifford Beal and Henry L. Stimson. Manship was very adept at low relief and used these skills to produce a large number of coins and medals, one of his later ones being the John F. Kennedy inaugural medal.

Manship was chosen by the American Battle Monuments Commission to create monuments following both the First and Second World Wars. They are located respectively in the American Cemetery at Thiaucourt, France in 1926, and in the military cemetery at Anzio, Italy.

Manship served on the board of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and chaired the board. Manship's extensive papers, maquettes and sculptures are housed in the museum's archives. In 2004 the Smithsonian mounted a retrospective of Manship's career which resulted in a reappraisal of the sculptor's work.

There is a gallery dedicated to the display of Manship's work at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Manship was father of the artist John Paul Manship (1927–2000).

Museums with Manship works

• Addison Gallery of American Art (Andover, Mass.)
• Amon Carter Museum (Texas)
• Art Institute of Chicago
• Ball State University Museum of Art (Muncie, Ind.)
• Brigham Young University Museum of Art (Utah)
• Cincinnati Art Museum
• Cape Ann Museum (Gloucester,Mass.)
• Colby College Museum of Art (Waterville, Me.)
• Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.)
• Courtauld Institute of Art (London)
• Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Bentonville, Ark.)
• Dayton Art Institute (Ohio)
• Delaware Art Museum (Wilmington, Del.)
• Harvard University Art Museums
• Heckscher Museum of Art (Huntington, N.Y.)
• Honolulu Academy of Arts
• Hudson River Museum (Yonkers, N.Y.)
• The Huntington (San Marino, Calif.)
• Indianapolis Museum of Art
• Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston)
• Joslyn Art Museum (Omaha, Neb.)
• Los Angeles County Museum of Art
• Minneapolis Institute of Arts
• Minnesota Museum of American Art (Saint Paul)
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
• National Academy of Design (New York City)
• National Gallery of Art (Washington D.C.)
• National Museum of Wildlife Art (Jackson Hole, Wyo.)
• New Britain Museum of American Art (Connecticut)
• New Orleans Museum of Art
• Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington D.C.)
• Speed Art Museum (Louisville, Ky.)
• Toledo Museum of Art (Ohio)
• Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Richmond, VA)
• Walker Art Center (Minneapolis)
• Westmoreland Museum of American Art (Greensburg, Penn.)

Public Sculpture

• Earth, Air, Water and Fire, bronze reliefs for the American Telephone & Telegraph Building, (now 195 Broadway), New York City, 1914
• Relief in honor of J. Pierpont Morgan at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1920
• Young Lincoln, Fort Wayne, Indiana, 1932
• Paul Rainey Memorial Gateway, Bronx Zoo, New York, 1934
• Prometheus Fountain, Rockefeller Center, New York, 1934.
• The Celestial Sphere Woodrow Wilson Memorial, Palais des Nations, United Nations Office at Geneva, Switzerland, 1939.
• Teddy Roosevelt statue, Theodore Roosevelt Island, Washington, D.C., 1967
• Gates to the Central Park Zoo Children's Zoo.
• President Albert Murphree, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, 1946

Gallery

• 

  Girl with a duck, 1911, Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia

• 

  Salome, 1915, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

• 

  Dancer and Gazelles, 1916, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

• 

  Atalanta, 1921, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

• 

  Diana and a Hound, 1924, Brookgreen Gardens, Pawley Island, South Carolina

• 

  Study for Venus Anadyomene, 1924, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

• 

  Actaeon (#1), 1925, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

• 

  Young Lincoln or Hoosier Youth, 1932, Fort Wayne, Indiana

• 

  Young Lincoln or Hoosier Youth (detail), 1932, Fort Wayne, Indiana

• 

  Evening (foreground), 1938, Brookgreen Gardens, Pawley Island, South Carolina

References

• Conner, Janis and Joel Rosenkranz, Rediscoveries in American Sculpture, Studio Works 1893–1939, University of Texas, Austin, Texas 1989
• Greenthal, Kozol, Rameirez & Fairbanks, American Figurative Sculpture in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 1986
• Manship, John, Paul Manship, (New York, Abbeville Press, 1989, ISBN 1-55859-002-1)
• Murtha, Edwin, Paul Manship, (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1957)
• Nishiura, Elizabeth, editor, American Battle Monuments: A Guide to Military Cemeteries and Monuments Maintained By the American Battle Monuments Commission, Omnigraphics Inc., Detroit, Michigan 1989
• Opitz, Glenn B., editor, Mantle Fielding’s Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors & Engravers, Apollo Book, Poughkeepsie NY, 1986
• Proske, Beatrice Gilman, Brookgreen Gardens Sculpture, Brookgreen Gardens, South Carolina, 1968
• Rand, Harry, Paul Manship, (London, Lund Humphries Publishers Limited, 1989, ISBN 0-85331-555-8)
• Rather, Susan, Archaism, Modernism and the art of Paul Manship, University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas, 1993
• Vitry, Paul, Paul Manship: Sculpteur Americain, Editions De La Gazette Des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1927

External links

• Links to Paul Manship sculpture images and references
• Two works by Manship (Insecula)

• Detailed biography (cached pages from the Internet Archive with no images)
  • Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 | Page 4 | Page 5

Persondata
Name	Manship, Paul
Alternative names
Short description	American sculptor
Date of birth	December 24, 1885
Place of birth
Date of death	January 28, 1966
Place of death