Arthur Putnam was an American sculptor, well-known both statewide and nationally. He was regarded as an artisitic genius in San Francisco.
Background
Arthur was born on September 6, 1873 in Waveland, Mississippi, United States. He was the second of three children of Oramel Hinckley Putnam, a civil engineer, and Mary (Gibson) Putnam, both of New England stock. His parents moved to Omaha and later, in 1880, to San Francisco, where the father died. The family then returned to Omaha, where Arthur spent his boyhood. Although an attractive and affectionate boy, he was hard to control.
Education
Several months Arthur Putnam was in Kemper Hall, a military academy at Davenport, Iowa. Later he had drawing lessons at the Art Students' League in San Francisco and studied chiefly by himself.
Career
For a time Putnam had a job in a photo-engraving establishment, where he may have learned the rudiments of drawing; then he worked in an iron foundry at New Orleans; at eighteen he rejoined his mother on a ranch near San Diego, California.
When he was twenty, over six feet tall and very strong, he applied for the Art Students' League in San Francisco. His genius was soon evident, and he was permitted to work for a few months in the studio of Rupert Schmidt, a sculptor. For the next six years he supported himself by working in a slaughter-house, surveying, trapping pumas for the San Francisco zoo. In 1897-98, he worked under the sculptor Edward Kemeys in Chicago.
Soon after his marriage, Putnam won the enduring friendship of the architect Willis Polk, through whom he thereafter received numerous commissions for architectural decorations. In 1903, E. W. Scripps ordered from him a series of large figures illustrating the history of California. Three of these, Indian, Priest, and Plowman, were completed and ultimately cast in bronze.
In December 1905, aided by Scripps and Mrs. W. H. Crocker, Putnam and his wife went to Europe. In Rome he studied bronze casting and exhibited several animal groups at the Spring Salon of 1906; in Paris, he had several groups accepted for the Salon of 1907, but he became homesick and returned early in that year to California.
The rebuilding of San Francisco after the earthquake kept him busy with architectural commissions, but, driving himself constantly, he continued to experiment with bronze casting and in 1909 started a foundry of his own where he produced a number of fine bronzes by the cire-perdue process. A good collection of his bronzes is on view at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco. He is represented also in the Fine Arts Society of San Diego, California, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and the Metropolitan Museum, New York. His larger works include the Sloat Monument at Monterey, California, and the bronze figures for E. W. Scripps.
He was steadily winning recognition when, in 1911, he submitted to an operation for a brain tumor which permanently impaired his brain. He never again could draw. Through the ensuing years he was enabled to exist largely by the help of his friends, who saw to the marketing of his accumulated bronzes and even took some of his plaster models to Paris to be cast.
After 1921 they lived abroad; he regained a measure of serenity; and in 1927 his former wife took her children to see their father. Death came to him suddenly at his home near Paris in his fifty-seventh year.
Achievements
Personality
After operation (1911) his left side wasparalyzed and his sense of proportion and his self-control were destroyed. Putnam had seizures of furious rage and became estranged from his family.
Connections
In July 1899, at Sacramento, Putnam married Grace Storey, a teacher of water color. Two children were born to them. On March 19, 1917, he married Marion Pearson, who cared for him during the rest of his life.