Herbert Haseltine

Herbert Haseltine (1877-1962) was an Italian-born French/American animalier sculptor.

Born in Rome, the son of the wealthy American landscape painter William Stanley Haseltine (1835-1900), he studied at Harvard University. After graduating in 1899, Haseltine went to the Academy in Munich, Germany to study drawing and then to the Academie Julian in Paris, France where he studied painting. After his first piece of sculpture met with success, he pursued that artistic avenue. Inspired by the gathering of artists from around the world to the Montparnasse Quarter of Paris, Haseltine chose to make Paris his home for the next thity-five years until the German occupation of France during World War II. He moved to the United States where he remained until 1947 at which time he returned to France.

Haseltine sculpted a variety of animals but is best known for his equestrian sculptures, most notably the 1934 life-size statue of the thoroughbred race horse Man o' War at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, Kentucky. He also traveled to India, where he made a oversized statue of one of the ancestors of the Maharadja of Nawanagar. It can still be seen there. He replicated many of his large works in table-top sizes. The author of a number of books on animalier art, Haseltine was well connected in American upper-class society and did a three-year project to create a work for heiress Barbara Hutton. This project included two horses heads which were gilded bronze, with precious and semi precious stones. After her death the heads disappeared and resurfaced a few years ago at an auction in New York.

During the time he lived in Paris at the Impasse Raffet (XVIeme Quartier) near the Rue Jasmin, he led a very colourful life. He entertained a lot of guests in his beautiful house, which was once depicted in the French Magazine "Maison & Jardin". Amongst his guests were Arthur Rubinstein, Cary Grant, Teddy Roosevelt jr and Charles Lindbergh. He also had a lot of contacts to highest Russian Royalty. His wife, neé Madeleine Keith was born in England and died in 1979 in Paris. The house was subsequently sold to the owner of Paris Match. His daughter Helen Heather Haseltine married an Austrian Count by the name of Paul Toggenburg, her descendents live in Italy and Austria now. By his son Marshall he has two grandchildren, of which one, Carla, is a well respected sculptress in her own right.

Herbert Haseltine died in Paris, in 1962.