A Dream and a Chisel

Nancy L. Penrose, Angela Gregory

Description

A portrait of a young artist's formative years studying sculpture in Paris, recounted in her own words

Angela Gregory is considered by many the doyenne of Louisiana sculpture and is a notable twentieth century American sculptor. In A Dream and a Chisel, Angela Gregory and Nancy Penrose explore Gregory's desire, even as a teenager, to learn the art of cutting stone and to become a sculptor. Through sheer grit and persistence, Gregory achieved her dream of studying with French artist Antoine Bourdelle, one of Auguste Rodin's most trusted assistants and described by critics of the era as France's greatest living sculptor. In Bourdelle's Paris studio, Gregory learned not only sculpting techniques but also how to live life as an artist. Her experiences in Paris inspired a prolific sixty-year career in a field dominated by men.

After returning to New Orleans from Paris, Gregory established her own studio in 1928 and began working in earnest. She created bas-relief profiles for the Louisiana State Capitol built in 1932 and sculpted the Bienville Monument, a bronze statue honoring the founder of New Orleans, in the 1950s. Her works also include two other monuments, sculptures incorporated into buildings, portrait busts, medallions, and other forms that appear in museums and public spaces throughout the state. She was the first Louisiana woman sculptor to achieve international recognition, and, at the age of thirty-five, became one of the few women recognized as a fellow of the National Sculpture Society. Gregory's work appeared in group shows at many prestigious museums and in exhibitions, including the Salon des Tuileries and the Salon d'Automne in Paris, the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, the National Collection of Fine Arts in the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

This memoir is based on Penrose's oral history interviews with Gregory, as well as letters and diaries compiled before Gregory's death in 1990. A Dream and a Chisel demonstrates the importance of mentorships, offers a glimpse into the realities of an artist's life and studio, and captures the vital early years of an extraordinary woman who carved a place for herself in Louisiana's history.

Sujets

• Sculpture
• Photographers
• Artists
• Architects
• Escuela de Diseño de Rhode Island
• Miguel Ángel
• Newcomb Pottery
• Lucretia Mott
• My Tutor
• Elizabeth Catlett
• Vinnie Ream
• Edmonia Lewis
• John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
• List of photographers
• Michelangelo
• Artist
• Architect
• Rhode Island School of Design
• Augustus Saint-Gaudens
• Lorado Taft
• Lucretia C. Mott
• Aristide Maillol
• Adam Mickiewicz
• Annie Besant
• ART
• George Sand
• Michel-Ange
• Henri Bergson

Informations

• Publié par: University of South Carolina Press
• Date de parution: 26 février 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781611179781
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

A DREAM AND A CHISEL
Women s Diaries and Letters of the South
Carol Bleser, Founding Editor
Melissa Walker and Giselle Roberts, Series Editors
A DREAM AND A CHISEL
LOUISIANA SCULPTOR ANGELA GREGORY IN PARIS 1925-1928
ANGELA GREGORY AND NANCY L. PENROSE

THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA PRESS
2019 Angela Gregory, LLC
Published by the University of South Carolina Press
Columbia, South Carolina 29208
www.sc.edu/uscpress
28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data can be found at http://catalog.loc.gov/ .
ISBN 978-1-61117-977-4 (cloth)
ISBN 978-1-61117-978-1 (ebook)
CONTENTS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FOUNDING EDITOR S PREFACE
FOREWORD
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
EDITORIAL NOTE

Prologue
ONE
A Childhood for Art: Growing up in New Orleans
TWO
Getting to Paris: The Parsons Scholarship
THREE
The Dream Comes True: First Lessons from Bourdelle
FOUR
Fully Accepted: Granted the Keys to Bourdelle s Studio
FIVE
Mastering Technique: The Rewards of Hard Work
SIX
Selina Arrives: A Broken Leg Shatters Happy Plans
SEVEN
Art and Friendship: Getting to Know Joseph Campbell
Epilogue: The Master Passes-Bourdelle s Death

APPENDIX: LIST OF SCULPTURAL WORKS
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
ILLUSTRATIONS
Angela Gregory with Beauvais Head of Christ in Antoine Bourdelle s studio
Angela Gregory with La Belle Augustine
Faithful George by Angela Gregory
Angela Gregory in her New Orleans studio with La Belle Augustine
Antoine Bourdelle and Angela Gregory monograms
Three Gregory children with their father
Plantation Madonna by Angela Gregory
Antoine Bourdelle in his studio
Bienville Monument by Angela Gregory
Scale model and armature of Bienville monument, Angela Gregory studio
Dying Centaur by Antoine Bourdelle
Angela Gregory and Cl op tre Sevastos Bourdelle
Hercules the Archer by Antoine Bourdelle
Angela Gregory in her New Orleans studio working on pelican for Criminal Courts Building
Pelican in place on Criminal Courts Building
Angela Gregory with her sculpture of Aesculapius
Letter from Angela Gregory to parents
Antoine Bourdelle and La France; La France
Beauvais Head of Christ by Angela Gregory
Jiddu Krishnamurti by Antoine Bourdelle
Joseph Campbell and Selina Gregory, Paris
Joseph Campbell , drawing and bronze portrait bust by Angela Gregory
Adelaide McLaughlin by Angela Gregory and La Belle Am ricaine by Antoine Bourdelle
Antoine Bourdelle with Angela Gregory and other students
Claire Muerdter, Nancy Penrose, and Angela Gregory
FOUNDING EDITOR S PREFACE
The Women s Diaries and Letters of the South includes a number of never-before-published diaries, collections of unpublished correspondence, and a few reprints of published diaries-a wide selection nineteenth- and twentieth-century southern women s informal writings. The series may be the largest series of published works by and on southern women.
The goal of the series is to enable women to speak for themselves, providing readers with a rarely opened window into southern society before, during, and after the American Civil War and into the twentieth century. The significance of these letters and journals lies not only in the personal revelations and the writing talent of these women authors but also in the range and versatility of the documents contents. Taken together, these publications will tell us much about the heyday and the fall of the Cotton Kingdom, the mature years of the peculiar institution, the war years, the adjustment of the South to a new social order following the defeat of the Confederacy, and the New South of the twentieth century. Through these writings the reader will also be presented with firsthand accounts of everyday life and social events, courtships, and marriages, family life and travels, religion and education, and the life-and-death matters that made up the ordinary and extraordinary world of the American South.
Carol Bleser
FOREWORD
Angela Gregory s (1903-1990) artistic leanings began in childhood and sculpture became her chosen m tier at the tender age of fourteen. She became one of New Orleans s most notable artists and was one of few local sculptors throughout Louisiana s three-hundred-year history to undertake large, publicly commissioned works. Gregory s most notable works include her Governor Henry Watkins Allen statue in Port Allen in West Baton Rouge Parish; her John McDonogh statue in New Orleans; and her monumental sculpture of the city s founder, Jean-Baptiste Le-Moyne, sieur de Bienville. She was the only American admitted to the personal studios of mile-Antoine Bourdelle (1861-1929) and she became one of few women of her era to be recognized nationally and internationally in a field dominated by men.
Gregory received her first formal art training at the Katherine Br s School from 1914 to 1921, where her mother, Selina Br s Gregory (1870-1953), taught art. Rosalie Urquhart (1854-1922), whom Angela recounts as one of her early teachers, studied at Newcomb, became an Art Craftsman, and taught at the Br s School. Angela s father, William Benjamin Gregory (1871-1945), a Tulane University professor of engineering with vast experience in his field, enjoyed an international reputation. His American and European contacts proved invaluable for his daughter. Throughout her art training, Angela Gregory thrived under the aegis of Newcomb College s faculty. Established in 1886 as Tulane s coordinate college for women, Newcomb had an art faculty that held staunchly to the tenets of the Arts and Crafts movement. Ellsworth Woodward (1861-1939), Henrietta Davidson Bailey (1874-1950), Mary Williams Butler (1863-1937), Mary Given Sheerer (1865-1954), and Gertrude Robert Smith (1869-1962), worked incessantly to provide opportunities for their students.
Like her mother, Angela benefitted from the determination of this same founding faculty dedicated fervently to the fledgling cause of women s education. Selina Br s had her first formal lessons at the age of fourteen in Woodward s first drawing class in 1885, and she had the following artistic firsts to her credit: a member of Newcomb s first pottery decoration class in 1895, Selina sold the first piece of the pottery to gain international recognition; and, she published the first souvenir postcard of the South, a reproduction of her drawing of an African American praline vendor who frequented Newcomb s campus. In 1921 Selina became a cofounder and charter member of the Arts and Crafts Club of New Orleans and its School of Art. This organization was critical in educating artists, exhibiting works by national and international artists, and holding lectures on art and literature. Nurtured in this groundbreaking environment, Angela s budding determination to become a sculptor was supported fully even before she matriculated at Newcomb College.
Gertrude Roberts Smith, who taught watercolor painting at Newcomb, influenced Gregory s selection for the prestigious Mary L. S. Neill Award in watercolor painting in 1924. The first faculty member recruited by Woodward, Smith was also an organizing force on the Board of Directors for the Arts and Crafts Club, and she invited the young Gregory to assist the German sculptor Albert Rieker (1889-1959). He instructed Gregory in the basics of sculpture, including constructing an armature, applying clay to this essential foundation for modeling a three-dimensional figure in clay, and the process of casting a bas-relief. Rieker achieved national recognition; Gregory later surpassed her teacher s accomplishments.
William Woodward (1859-1939), Ellsworth s older brother and a Tulane University professor of architecture, took the young Gregory seriously enough to teach her sculpture despite the fact this was his first teaching experience in the field of sculpture. The experience led Woodward to produce at least three portrait heads of his mother; although, as competent as they were, these works lacked the power, liveliness, and insightful character of Gregory s sculptures.
Following Gregory s education at Newcomb and the Arts and Crafts Club, extraordinary opportunities continued, including work with New York sculptor Charles Keck (1875-1951), who was known for his monuments and architectural sculptures. Keck had studied at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League. He was the former praticien, or technical assistant, for renowned American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907), whose women apprentices included Helen Farnsworth Mears (1872-1916), Marie Lawrence (1868-1945), Annetta St. Gaudens (1869-1943), Frances Grimes (1869-1963), and Elsie Ward Hering (1872-1923), who all became successful artists.
Elected into the National Academy of Design as an associate member in 1921, Keck became a full academician in 1928 while Gregory was in Paris. Her professional training in this reputable studio in 1924 was critical preparation for her work at L Acad mie de la Grande Chaumi re and in Bourdelle s atelier in 1926. These experiences formed Gregory s lifelong attitude toward art, particularly the concept that sculpture should be conceived and executed in a manner that is unified with architecture. Gregory became the first woman to receive a Master of Arts degree from the Tulane School of Architecture in 1940. She worked with architects J. Herndon Thomson (1891-1969), A. Herbert Levy (1897-1969), Nathaniel Cortlandt Curtis (1881-1953), and Marion Dean Ross (1913-1991), all of whom Gregory cited in an unda