Background
Paul Howard Manship was born on December 24, 1885 in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was the son of Charles Henry Manship, a merchant, and Mary Etta Friend.
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Paul Howard Manship
Edit ProfileEducation
Manship attended school in St. Paul from 1892 to 1903. He took art courses at the Mechanical Arts High School and the St. Paul Institute School of Art, an evening school. As a child, Manship wanted to become a painter, but he began to realize his talent as a sculptor by the age of fifteen. He especially enjoyed modeling clay masks of family members. Manship, uninterested in academic studies, left school in 1903 to work at an engraving company in St. Paul but quit after a year in order to become an independent designer and illustrator. By the spring of 1905 he had realized that he would have greater career opportunities outside St. Paul. He moved to New York City, where he attended the Art Students League and assisted the sculptor Solon Borglum. While Manship helped Borglum with his large equestrian monuments, he began to appreciate the importance of anatomical knowledge to the sculptor. He dissected animals in Borglum's studio, and the following year he attended Charles Grafly's life classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Manship studied at the academy until 1908. He also assisted the sculptor Isidore Konti, who helped Manship improve his modeling techniques and encouraged him to enter the competition for the American Prix de Rome, which Manship won in 1909. This coveted prize in sculpture gained Manship a scholarship to the American Academy of Rome, where he studied from 1909 to 1912, and enabled him to travel in Europe.
Career
Manship had gained recognition as a sculptor whose works demonstrated both technical excellence and simplicity of execution. The city architects Charles A. Platt and Welles Bosworth promoted Manship's work, and he began to create garden sculpture for the estate homes of Harold McCormick, Charles Schwab, and Herbert Pratt, among others. Manship also executed in 1914 the exterior and interior relief sculptures for the Western Union Building in New York City. Besides life-size bronze figures and monumental pieces, Manship continued to produce small bronze figures similar to those he had executed as a student at the American Academy. A selection of these bronzes was shown at the National Academy of Design's 1914 exhibition and evoked the praise of Herbert Adams, the president of the National Sculpture Society. Adams noted Manship's "great technical address, backed by a sound knowledge of form, " and asserted that "some of his little bronzes seem to be absolutely complete real objets d'art in the best sense. " Thirty-eight of Manship's bronze figures went on a national museum tour in 1915-1916. At the time of Manship's first one-man show in New York, directed by Martin Birnbaum in February 1916, Manship had a reputation as an American sculptor who incorporated both classical and modern elements. Manship joined the American Red Cross in Italy during the fall of 1918, and he returned again to Europe after World War I had ended. He resided in Paris from 1922 to 1926, where he executed several portrait busts. He regarded portrait work as a lesser art form, yet he continued to do it throughout his career, executing about forty in the 1920's. He completed the Soldiers Monument at Thiaucourt, France, in 1926, and in 1927 he returned to America. He established a studio in Manhattan, where he continued to execute portraits, reliefs, small figures, medals, and large monumental works. Many of Manship's best-known monuments were commissioned during the 1930's. For his Abraham Lincoln, the Hoosier Youth, he wanted to emphasize Lincoln's personal characteristics "his kindness, his strength of body and of spirit, and his wisdom. " He designed the statue to be both realistic and inspirational, a balance of movement and form that was aesthetically pleasing and emotionally elevating. He adhered to authentic representational detail (Lincoln's rustic costume, his hound by his side, his ax), which underscores the symbolic dimensions of the work. His Prometheus Fountain at Rockefeller Plaza in New York (1934) is more typical of his attempt to integrate mythical and classical themes and modes with a modern setting and style. This resulted in a work that, like Prometheus, is "more decorative" and "less monumental" and even lighthearted. Manship spent two years designing the Paul J. Rainey Memorial Gateway at the New York Zoological Park (1934). The gateway is forty-two feet wide and thirty-six feet high, "with ten gilded bronze birds and ten other animals placed in the foliated structure. " For the 1939-1940 New York World's Fair, he created three sculpture groups: The Moods of Time and Time and the Fates of Man (a sundial) on Constitution Mall, and Celestial Sphere in the Court of States. The Moods of Time, which comprised four groups of large plaster figures representing the times of day, was destroyed after the fair, although smaller bronze casts of the figures survive. He also created the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Celestial Sphere for the League of Nations in Geneva, Switzerland (1939). During the 1940's and 1950's, Manship continued to do portraits and medals, as well as official corporate and government sculpture. The range of his work continued to be varied in scope, yet it received less recognition than that of his prolific output during the 1930's. In 1958 the Smithsonian Institution sponsored a retrospective exhibition of his work. In 1960 he was commissioned to do the inaugural medal for John F. Kennedy, having produced one for Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933. Throughout the 1940's and 1950's, Manship lectured extensively, sometimes highlighting his lectures on sculpture history and techniques with demonstrations. He died on January 28, 1966 in New York City.
Achievements
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Paul Manship is well known for his large public commissions, including the iconic Prometheus in Rockefeller Center. He is also credited for designing the modern rendition of New York City's official seal. Some of his most noted portrait busts are those of John D. Rockefeller (1918) and John Barrymore (1918). Although some critics complained that his portraits were too stylized and formal, his portrait work was noted for its natural blending of realistic detail with design elements. Manship's work can be seen in public and private buildings, as well as museums, throughout America. His many honors include a Pierpont Morgan fellowship, a Widener Gold Medal from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the award of Chevalier from the French Legion of Honor.
Views
Throughout his career he adhered to the idea that form and emotional content in art must be conjoined. "Sculpture is but a part of the greater scheme of art, " he said. "Dissociated from Nature, it still must find its rhythms in the organization of natural forms. But more important than formalities and geometrical considerations is the feeling for human qualities and harmony and movement of life. " His work is largely representational, reflecting an eclectic blend of several artistic influences. He was inspired by the formal classicism of Greek and Roman sculpture (which he came to appreciate during his years of study in Italy and travels to Greece), and he admired the linear grace of Eastern art.
Personality
Manship had perfect sense of humor, also he was also characterized as a serious person with great power of concentration. One visitor to his studio in the 1930's noted how Manship worked "cheerfully despite the noise made by the three young Manship children racing around the modelling stands on their tricycles. " Some critics attributed the decorative qualities of his earlier work, such as Dancer and Gazelles (1916), to East Indian influences. Overall, what critics recognized as "the Manship style" reflected his ability, as one critic expressed it, to "project himself into another culture, extract its essence, and make it his own. " Not all critics have praised Manship's work. Some have felt that he did not live up to his early promise, that his works lack depth and are all form and no substance. Some have believed that he remained tied to an academic tradition that encouraged representation rather than experimentation in sculpture. One critic in the early 1920's summarized the persistent critical trend when he noted the "provocative quality" of Manship's art, which "has been the more interesting because it has excited admiration and doubt in pretty nearly equal measure. "
Quotes from others about the person
Booth Tarkington remarked, "Other men could do some painting or modelling and do an accompanying 'patter, ' of course, but no other even rumored to me could simultaneously produce a real 'object of art' and a gayly highlighted history of sculpture the essentials of that history all in human terms and as if from the mouth, not of Sir Oracle, but of a customary friend and crony talking intimately. "
Connections
Paul Manship married Isabel McIlwaine on January 1, 1913; they had four children.
References
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Born
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Died
January 31, 1966 (aged 80) -
Nationality
American