Gutzon Borglum | |
|---|---|
 Borglum in 1919 | |
| Born | John Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum (1867-03-25)March 25, 1867 St. Charles,Idaho Territory, U.S. |
| Died | March 6, 1941(1941-03-06) (aged 73) Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Resting place | Forest Lawn Memorial Park,Glendale, California |
| Education | Mark Hopkins Institute of Art[1][2] Académie Julian[3] École des Beaux-Arts[2] California School of Design[4] |
| Known for | Sculpture,painting |
| Notable work | Mount Rushmore Stone Mountain |
| Movement | Bull Moose Party[5] |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 3, includingLincoln |
John Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum (March 25, 1867 – March 6, 1941) was an Americansculptor best known for his work onMount Rushmore. He is also associated with various other public works of art across the U.S., includingStone Mountain in Georgia, statues of Union GeneralPhilip Sheridanin Washington, D.C., andin Chicago, as well asa bust of Abraham Lincoln exhibited in theWhite House byTheodore Roosevelt[6] and now held in theUnited States Capitol crypt in Washington, D.C.[7]
The son ofDanish immigrants, John Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum was born in 1867 inSt. Charles, in what was then thought to be in Utah but was later determined to be inIdaho Territory. Borglum was a child ofMormon polygamy. His father, Jens Møller Haugaard Børglum (1839–1909), came from the village ofBørglum in northwestern Denmark. He had two wives when he lived in Idaho: Gutzon's mother, Christina Mikkelsen Børglum (1847–1871), and her sister Ida, who was Jens's first wife.[8]
Jens Borglum decided to leave theLDS Church and moved toOmaha, Nebraska, where polygamy was both illegal and taboo.[9] Jens Borglum had worked mainly as a woodcarver before his decision to attend the Saint Louis Homeopathic Medical College[10] inSt. Louis, Missouri. At this point "Jens and Christina divorced, the family left the LDS church, and Jens, Ida, their children, and Christina's two sons, Gutzon and Solon, moved to St. Louis, where Jens earned a medical degree." Upon his graduation from the Missouri Medical College in 1874, Dr. Borglum moved the family to Fremont, Nebraska, where he established a medical practice.[11][12] Gutzon Borglum remained in Fremont until 1882, when his father enrolled him inSt. Mary's College, Kansas.[13]
After a brief stint at Saint Mary's College, Gutzon Borglum moved to Omaha, Nebraska, where he apprenticed in a machine shop and graduated fromCreighton Preparatory School.
In New York City, he sculpted saints and apostles for the newCathedral of St. John the Divine in 1901; in 1906 he had a group sculpture accepted by theMetropolitan Museum of Art[14]—the first sculpture by a living American the museum had ever purchased—and made his presence further felt with some portraits. He also won theLogan Medal of the Arts. His reputation soon surpassed that of his younger brotherSolon Borglum, already an established sculptor.
In 1889, Borglum married his painting instructor,Elizabeth Putnam Janes, who was 18 years his senior.[15] After divorcing his first wife, Borglum married Mary Montgomery Williams, on May 20, 1909, with whom he had three children,[8] including a son,Lincoln, and a daughter, Mary Ellis (Mel) Borglum Vhay.
According to the American Geographical Society website, "TheDavid Livingstone Centenary Medal was founded at the initiative of theHispanic Society of America in March 1913". The site goes on to state "Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor of Mt. Rushmore, was the designer of this unusually beautiful example of medallic art." The same website page notes thatTheodore Roosevelt was awarded the medal in 1917.[16]
Borglum was active in the committee that organized the New YorkArmory Show of 1913, the birthplace ofmodernism in American art. By the time the show was ready to open, however, Borglum had resigned from the committee, feeling that the emphasis on avant-garde works had co-opted the original premise of the show and made traditional artists like himself look provincial. He moved into an estate inStamford, Connecticut,[17] in 1914 and lived there for 10 years. He shelteredCzechoslovak Legion members on his land at Stamford in 1917.[18]
Borglum was an active member of the Ancient Free and Accepted Masons (theFreemasons), raised in Howard Lodge #35, New York City, on June 10, 1904, and serving as its Worshipful Master 1910–11. In 1915, he was appointed Grand Representative of the Grand Lodge of Denmark near the Grand Lodge of New York. He received his Scottish Rite Degrees in the New York City Consistory on October 25, 1907.[19] He was friends withTheodore Roosevelt for many years[20][21] and during the1912 United States presidential election Borglum was a very active campaign organizer and member[22] of theBull Moose Party.[23][24]
While it has been claimed that Borglum was a member of theKu Klux Klan,[7] an article in theSmithsonian Magazine denies that there is proof that he officially joined the KKK.[25] That said, he became "deeply involved in Klan politics", attending Klan rallies and serving on Klan committees.[23]: 186 In 1925, having only completed the head of Robert E. Lee, Borglum was dismissed from the Stone Mountain project, with some holding that it came about due to infighting within the KKK, with Borglum involved in the strife.[26] Later, he stated "I am not a member of the Kloncilium, nor a knight of the KKK", but Howard Shaff and Audrey Karl Shaff claim that "that was for public consumption".[27] The museum at Mount Rushmore displays a letter to Borglum fromD. C. Stephenson, the infamous Klan Grand Dragon who later was convicted of the rape and murder ofMadge Oberholtzer. The 8 ft × 10 ft (2.4 m × 3.0 m) portrait contains the inscription "To my good friend Gutzon Borglum, with the greatest respect." Correspondence from Borglum to Stephenson during the 1920s detailed a deepracist conviction inNordic moral superiority and strict immigration policies.[28]
A fascination with gigantic scale and themes of heroic nationalism suited his extroverted personality. Hishead of Abraham Lincoln, carved from a six-ton block of marble, was exhibited inTheodore Roosevelt'sWhite House and can be found in theUnited States Capitol Crypt inWashington, D.C. A "patriot", believing that the "monuments we have built are not our own", he looked to create art that was "American, drawn from American sources, memorializing American achievement", according to a 1908 interview.[citation needed] Borglum was highly suited to the competitive environment surrounding the contracts for public buildings and monuments, and his public sculptures are found all around the United States.
In 1908, Borglum won a competition for anequestrian statue of the Civil War GeneralPhilip Sheridan to be placed inSheridan Circle in Washington, D.C. A second version ofGeneral Philip Sheridan was erected inChicago, Illinois, in 1923. Winning this competition was a personal triumph for him because he won out over sculptorJ. Q. A. Ward, a much older and more established artist and one whom Borglum had clashed with earlier in regard to theNational Sculpture Society. At the unveiling of the Sheridan statue, one observer, President Theodore Roosevelt (whom Borglum was later to include in the Mount Rushmore portrait group), declared that it was "first rate"; a critic wrote that "as a sculptor Gutzon Borglum was no longer a rumor, he was a fact".[13]
PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt delivered an address on May 3, 1934, dedicating a statue ofWilliam Jennings Bryan created by Borglum. This Bryan statue by Borglum originally stood in Washington, D.C., but was later displaced by highway construction and moved by an Act of Congress in 1961 toSalem, Illinois, Bryan's birthplace.[29][30]
In 1925, the sculptor moved to Texas to work on the monument to trail drivers commissioned by the Trail Drivers Association. He completed the model in 1925, but due to lack of funds it was not cast until 1940, and then was only a fourth its originally planned size. It stands in front of the Texas Pioneer and Trail Drivers Memorial Hall next to theWitte Museum inSan Antonio. Borglum lived at the historicMenger Hotel, which in the 1920s was the residence of a number of artists. He subsequently planned the redevelopment of the Corpus Christi waterfront; the plan failed,[why?] although a model for a statue of Christ intended for it was later modified by his son and erected on a mountaintop in South Dakota. While living and working in Texas, Borglum took an interest in local beautification. He promoted change and modernity, although he was berated by academicians.[31]
Borglum was initially involved in the carving ofStone Mountain inGeorgia. Borglum'snativist stances made him seem an ideologically sympathetic choice to carve a memorial to heroes of theConfederate States of America, planned forStone Mountain, Georgia. In 1915, coinciding with the Klan-glorifying, highly successfulThe Birth of a Nation, he was approached by theUnited Daughters of the Confederacy with a project for sculpting a 20-foot (6 m) high bust of GeneralRobert E. Lee on the mountain's 800-foot (240 m) rockface. Borglum accepted, but told the committee, "Ladies, a twenty-foot head of Lee on that mountainside would look like a postage stamp on a barn door."[32]
Borglum's ideas eventually evolved into a high relieffrieze of Lee,Jefferson Davis, andStonewall Jackson riding around the mountain, followed by a legion of artillery troops. Borglum agreed to include aKu Klux Klan altar in his plans for the memorial to acknowledge a request of Helen Plane in 1915, who wrote to him: "I feel it is due to the KKK that saved us from Negro domination andcarpetbag rule, that it be immortalized on Stone Mountain".[26]
After a delay caused byWorld War I, Borglum and the newly chartered Stone Mountain Confederate Monumental Association set to work on this monument, the largest ever attempted. Many difficulties slowed progress, some because of the sheer scale involved. After finishing the detailed model of the carving, Borglum was unable to trace the figures onto the massive area on which he was working, until he developed a giganticmagic lantern to project the image onto the side of the mountain.
Carving officially began on June 23, 1923, with Borglum making the first cut. At Stone Mountain he developed sympathetic connections with the reorganized Ku Klux Klan, who were major financial backers of the monument. Lee's head was unveiled on Lee's birthday January 19, 1924, to a large crowd, but soon thereafter Borglum was increasingly at odds with the officials of the organization. His domineering, perfectionist, authoritarian manner brought tensions to such a point that in March 1925 Borglum smashed his clay and plaster models. He left Georgia permanently, his tenure with the organization over. None of his work remains, as it was all blasted off the mountain's face for the work of Borglum's replacementHenry Augustus Lukeman. In his abortive attempt, however, Borglum had developed the necessary techniques for sculpting on a gigantic scale that made Mount Rushmore possible.[33]
His Mount Rushmore project, 1927–1941, was the brainchild of South Dakota state historianDoane Robinson.[34] His first attempt with the face ofThomas Jefferson had to be redone when it was determined that there was not enough stone to complete it.[35] Dynamite was used to remove large areas of rock from under Washington's brow. The initial pair of presidents,George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, was soon joined byAbraham Lincoln andTheodore Roosevelt.[13]
Ivan Houser, father ofJohn Sherrill Houser, was assistant sculptor to Gutzon Borglum in the early years of carving; he began working with Borglum shortly after the inception of the monument and was with Borglum for a total of seven years. When Houser left Gutzon to devote his talents to his own work, Gutzon's son, Lincoln, took over as assistant sculptor to his father.[36]
Borglum alternated exhausting on-site supervising with world tours, raising money, polishing his personal legend, sculpting aThomas Paine memorial for Paris and aWoodrow Wilson memorial forPoznań, Poland (1931).[37] In his absence, work at Mount Rushmore was overseen by Bill Tallman[38] and later his son,Lincoln Borglum.[39] During the Rushmore project, father and son were residents of Beeville, Texas. When he died in Chicago, following complications of surgery, his son finished another season at Rushmore, but left the monument largely in the state of completion it had reached under his father's direction.[40]
_by_Gutzon_Borglum.jpg)
In 1909, the sculptureRabboni was created as a grave site for the Ffoulke Family in Washington, D.C., atRock Creek Cemetery.[41]
Four public works by Borglum are inNewark, New Jersey:Seated Lincoln (1911),Indian and the Puritan (1916),Wars of America (1926), and astele with bas-relief,First Landing Party of the Founders of Newark (1916). No other U.S. city holds as many public displays by Borglum.[42][43]
In 1912, theNathaniel Wheeler Memorial Fountain, designed by Borglum, was dedicated inBridgeport, Connecticut.
A memorial toRobert Louis Stevenson at Baker Cottage,Saranac Lake, New York, was unveiled in 1915.[relevant?]
In 1916, he overhauled the design of the torch for theStatue of Liberty in New York City.[44]
In 1918, he was one of the drafters of theCzechoslovak declaration of independence.[45]
One of Borglum's more unusual pieces isThe Aviator, completed in 1919 as a memorial forJames Rogers McConnell, who was killed in World War I while flying for theLafayette Escadrille. It is located on the grounds of theUniversity of Virginia inCharlottesville, Virginia.[46]
In 1922, he crafted theWilliam Dempster Hoard Sculpture in the north end what is now theHenry Mall Historic District at theUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison.[47]
His statue of Collis P. Huntington was completed in 1924 and stands at the entrance of the CSX Huntington headquarters building located in the 900 block of Seventh Avenue,Huntington, West Virginia.
Hisstatue of Harvey W. Scott was completed in 1933 and stood at the peak ofMount Tabor, Portland, Oregon, until it was toppled by protestors in 2020.
Borglum sculpted theMemorial to the "Start Westward of the United States", which is located inMuskingum Park,Marietta, Ohio (1938).[48] The work was featured on a 1938 3¢ US postage stamp.[49]
He built the statue ofDaniel Butterfield atSakura Park in Manhattan (1918).[50]
He created a memorial toSacco and Vanzetti (1928), a plaster cast of which is now in the Boston Public Library.[51][52][53][54][55]
Another Borglum design is theNorth Carolina Monument onSeminary Ridge at theGettysburg Battlefield in south-centralPennsylvania. The cast bronze sculpture depicts a woundedConfederate officer encouraging his men to push forward duringPickett's Charge. Borglum had also made arrangements for an airplane to fly over the monument during the dedication ceremony on July 3, 1929. During the sculpture's unveiling, the plane scattered roses across the field as a salute to those North Carolinians who had fought and died at Gettysburg.[citation needed]
In 1939 when German troops marched into Poland, they destroyed Borglum's statue ofWoodrow Wilson located inPoznań.[56]
While visiting Chicago in 1941 to give a talk, Borglum began feeling ill and underwent routineprostate surgery. However,blood clots resulting from the surgery led to a series ofheart attacks, with the final one resulting in his death on March 6. He was initially buried in a Chicago cemetery, with plans to laterreinter his body elsewhere. The Rushmore Commission recommended that his body be interred in a specially constructed tomb at Mount Rushmore. However, there was no approval for his wife to be buried alongside him there, and several years after his death, his body was interred at its final resting place atForest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.[13][57][58]
His son,Lincoln Borglum, would go on to complete the Mount Rushmore memorial and serve as the memorial's first superintendent.[13][57]
.jpg)
Mr. Borglum is the sculptor who shattered several angels that he had intended for St. John's Cathedral a month or so ago because some critics held that his angels were feminine, not masculine.
| Construction |
| .jpg) |
|---|---|---|
| Subjects | ||
| Museum | ||
| Location | ||
| Legacy | ||
| Related | ||
