He was born on December 11, 1867 in Norwich, Connecticut, United States. He was a descendant of Mathew Pratt, an early settler of Weymouth, Massachussets. His father, a Yale graduate, was an able lawyer. His mother was deeply religious, and reared her children strictly; her nobility of character is revealed in the marble portrait bust made by her son when she was eighty-two. Her father was the once famous Orramel Whittlesey, proprietor of Music Vale Seminary, Salem, Connecticut. From him the grandson may have derived his musical taste.
Education
At the age of sixteen, the boy was sent to the Yale School of Fine Arts, where he studied under two excellent masters, John Ferguson Weir and John Henry Niemeyer. In 1887, he entered the Art Students' League of New York, where his instructors were F. E. Elwell and Augustus Saint-Gaudens in modeling, and Kenyon Cox and William M. Chase in drawing and painting.
In 1890, advised by Saint-Gaudens, Pratt went to Paris, to study under the solid Chapu and the brilliant Falguire. He entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts at the head of his class, captured prizes, and after two years abroad returned to America.
Career
Saint-Gaudens, always a vivid and inspiring teacher, thoroughly interested in youthful talent, received him as assistant in his private studio. It was an invaluable privilege, and this early contact with Saint-Gaudens at work influenced Pratt's whole career.
Later he took part in the joyous interlude of preparation for the World's Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893. His pair of colossal groups for the Water Gate received praise for sculptural fitness. In 1893, he was chosen instructor in modeling at the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts, a position which he filled until his death. He was a representative of the Boston tradition in sculpture, begun by Greenough and continued by Ball, Milmore, and French. Influential members of the intellectual circles sought his work.
Among his earlier works in Boston was a series of intimate portrait bas-reliefs in the manner of Saint-Gaudens, and hence in full contrast with his groups for the World's Columbian Exposition. These reliefs included portraits of the two daughters of Dr. Frederick C. Shattuck (1893), the Slater children (1894), and Mrs. Shattuck and daughter (1894). At this time he modeled also the medal presented by Harvard University alumni to President Eliot. The likeness in the Eliot medal was considered the best yet obtained of its subject; a bust of Dr. Eliot followed.
The years 1895 and 1896 Pratt devoted chiefly to sculptures for the Library of Congress, Washington. He made six large spandrel figures for the main entrance; a well-composed statue of "Philosophy, " one of eight colossal figures surmounting columns in the rotunda; and most successful of all, four circular high reliefs representing the four seasons, placed in the southwest pavilion. In 1896 came a bronze "Victory" for the battleship Massachusetts; of later date were the bronzes for the Kearsarge and the Alabama. Pratt's truer vein appeared in the next works issuing from his busy studio. The bust of Phillips Brooks for Brooks House, Harvard University (1899) is a solid achievement in the delineation of a great personality. Other thoughtful portraits varying in merit are the bust of Dr. Shattuck, St. Paul's School (1900); the Avery memorial bust, Groton, Connecticut.
Side by side with these realistic representations of virile character Pratt was developing idealistic themes of feminine beauty, as in the classically draped relief figures of "Peace" and "War" in the admirable General Butler Memorial, Lowell, Massachussets.
Within the decade following his return from Paris, Pratt had already won success in five branches of his art: decorative groups, portrait bas-reliefs, busts of men, ideal nudes of women and children, and youthful soldierly figures. In these last three fields he was thereafter to gain his chief distinction. His divination of character gave a fine authenticity to such portrait busts as that of Gen. Charles J. Paine (1905).
At the time of his death in Boston from heart disease, he had in his studio a colossal figure of Alexander Hamilton, for Chicago, and a heroic statue of Bishop Brooks in academic gown, for Boston.
Achievements
Bela Lyon Pratt had a 25-year career as an influential teacher of modeling in the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. One of Pratt's most famous students at the School was John A. Wilson. He was also a popular sculptor, his work which today holds its own as among his best in feeling and in treatment is the bronze statue of a young Spanish War soldier in undress uniform, placed on the grounds of St. Paul's School. His famous gold Indian Head half ($5) and quarter ($2. 50) eagle gold U. S. coins are known as the "Pratt coins" and feature an unusual intaglio Indian head, the U. S. mint's only recessed design in circulation.
He received a silver medal at the Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo, 1901. At the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, 1915, Pratt received a gold medal for a collection of seventeen pieces indicating his remarkable range of power.
Membership
He was a member of the Guild of Boston Artists, the National Sculpture Society, the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the Architectural League of New York, the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts, and an associate member of the National Academy of Design.
Personality
His sympathies were both ready and profound; he loved other arts besides his own; he enjoyed music and painting; he collected pictures. In repose, his sober, clean-shaven countenance gave little hint of his abundant humor.
Quotes from others about the person
Dr. Eliot wrote, Pratt was "a grave, modest, just, and cheerful man. "
Connections
On August 11, 1897, he married Helen Lugada Pray. Their home was in Jamaica Plain; Pratt's studio in Boston. Later, a summer home at North Haven, Maine, gave the family the outdoor life which Pratt's frail physique especially needed.
