Hermon Atkins MacNeil was born on February 27, 1866, near Chelsea, Massachusets. He was the son of John Clinton MacNeil, a nurseryman, and Mary Lash (Pratt) MacNeil.
His father, a native of New Hampshire, was descended from Abraham MacNeil, who came to the United States from Ireland in 1750.
Education
After attending public schools, MacNeil received his first formal instruction in art at the Massachusetts Normal Art School in Boston, from which he graduated in 1886.
He then became an instructor in modeling for three years at Cornell University before going to Paris in 1888 to continue his studies at the Académie Julian with Henri Chapu and at the École des Beaux-Arts with Jean Falguière.
Career
In 1892, MacNeil returned to the United States and settled in Chicago to assist Philip Martiny in the numerous architectural sculptures he was making for the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 and was awarded a designer's medal for his work. After the exposition, he remained in Chicago, where he taught at the Art Institute for three years.
During this period, he became interested in North American Indians and made several trips to the West to study them and their way of life. For many years, Indians remained his primary subject. In 1896, MacNeil was the first recipient of the Roman Rinehart Scholarship, established by the estate of William H. Rinehart to allow American sculptors to study at the American Academy in Rome.
MacNeil spent the next four years there and produced several of his finest Indian pieces, including his Sun Vow, a moving study of an Indian brave seated next to an Indian youth who, according to tribal ritual, has just shot an arrow toward the sun. In 1901, MacNeil returned to the United States and set up a studio at College Point, Queens, New York, where he continued to live and work throughout his life.
Unfortunately, his vigorously composed and modeled group The Despotic Age, made, as were most exposition sculptures, of plaster and straw, disintegrated soon after the fair ended. In 1905, he produced a bronze group of two Indians called The Coming of the White Man for the city of Portland, Oregon.
Although this was similar in subject to the famous equestrian series by his contemporary Cyrus Dallin, MacNeil's defiant warriors stand, one with arms folded, looking intently into the distance presumably at the white men who moved into their land in increasing numbers. The figures are richly modeled in the manner MacNeil learned during his years of study in Paris.
He spent the years 1919 and 1920, at the American Academy in Rome, where he was a visiting professor. He held other teaching positions during his career at the National Academy of Design, Pratt Institute, and the Art Students League in New York. By the time World War I began, MacNeil reached the peak of his career, although he continued to receive large commissions and remained productive for nearly twenty more years.
Among his major sculptures dating from the 1920's and 1930's are the portrait statues of Judge Ellsworth and Colonel David Humphrey for Hartford, Connecticut; a war monument for Flushing, New York; the Marquette Memorial, Chicago; a Pilgrim Fathers Memorial for Waterbury, Connecticut; the bronze figure of George Rogers Clark for the Clark Memorial in Vincennes, Ind. ; a bronze equestrian Pony Express Rider for St. Joseph, Missouri; and the stone figure of George Washington as a military leader for the Washington Square Arch in New York City.
MacNeil also created a frieze for the Missouri state capitol in Jefferson City, the theme of which was the anthropological development of man in the United States, and he made the sculpture group for the east pediment of the United States Supreme Court Building in Washington, D. C.
MacNeil's first fame came with the Indian subjects, but after 1920, he was increasingly absorbed with war memorials and portrait statues, for which his lively naturalism seemed especially appropriate to his clients. His last major work the heroic, bronze Fort Sumter Memorial (1932) for Charleston, South Carolina was an attempt to merge traditional with progressive styles, and the result was unsatisfactory.
MacNeil was a member of many professional societies. He was elected to the National Academy of Design in 1906 and served as president of the National Sculpture Society (1910-1912; 1922 - 1924).
MacNeil died on February 27, 1866, in College Point at the age of eighty-one.
Achievements
Views
In style, MacNeil's work from the beginning bore the imprint of the French manner that developed around the École des Beaux-Arts a rich and vigorous modeling with many small facets creating the effect of light and shadow actively rippling across the surfaces of the bronze.
Added to this was a vital naturalism and proclivity toward colorful details, particularly in the Indian pieces and allegorical subjects. He resisted the innovative experiments of modern art, such as cubism and constructivism, and like so many of his generation attempted to perpetuate the conservative academic tradition.
Membership
a member of the National Academy of Design
Connections
On December 25, 1895, MacNeil married Carol Louise Brooks, also a sculptor; they had three children: Claude Lash, Alden Brooks, and Joie Katherine. His first wife died in 1944, and on February 2, 1946, he married Cecelia (Weick) Muench, a widow.