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Frederick William MacMonnies

Diana, 1890

bronze

H: 30 in.

Gift in memory of Hugh H. Hanna

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Frederick MacMonnies was born in Brooklyn, New York. He began carving stone at an early age, and by eighteen he was working in the studio of Augustus Saint-Gaudens.

MacMonnies studied at night at the National Academy of Design and The Art Students League of New York.  In 1884 he traveled to Paris where he studied sculpture at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and later opened a studio. MacMonnies won numerous awards at the Paris Salon and traveled annually to the United States visiting dealers and patrons. His long term residence in France was at Giverny, the home of the famous French impressionist painter Claude Monet. With the help of the architect Stanford White MacMonnies received numerous important sculpture commissions. The centerpiece of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago was awarded to MacMonnies in 1891.  The sculpture of Columbia in her Grand Barge of State was placed in the vast central fountain of the exposition’s Court of Honor and established MacMonnies as the one of the most important sculptors of his time. He returned to the United States in 1915, where he continued his successful career.

Macmonnies reached his maturity in France.  One of his first successful efforts there was Diana, a mythological figure executed in the graceful and naturalistic Beaux-Arts style of the late nineteenth-century.  MacMonnies shows the huntress just after the arrow’s release, a moment well-suited to the sculptor’s own exuberant personality.

Reference

William DeLeftwich Dodge.  Impressions Home and Abroad with Sculpture by Frederick William MacMonnies, New York: Beacon Hill Fine Art, 1998. ASIN: B001ON57A0