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Information about
the sculptor and the sculpture
Jonathan Scott Hartley (1845 - 1912)
Jonathan Scott Hartley,
a late nineteenth century sculptor, helped influence the newly
developing artistic center of Montclair, New Jersey. Hartley, son-in-law
to the famous landscape painter George Inness, was born in Albany, New
York and was first employed in a marble monument yard. It wasn’t until
later that he was able to work in a studio with one of the most famous
neo- classical American artists of the day, Erastus Dow Palmer. Hartley
then went abroad, spending most of his time in London, Berlin, and
Paris, where he studied the great sculptors. He returned to New York in
1875, and soon produced his acclaimed piece The Whirlwind, in
1878.
After his marriage to
Helen Inness in 1888, Hartley moved to Montclair, where he continued to
work as a sculptor. “The Hartleys lived next to the great landscape
painter in a reconstructed farmhouse, connected to the Inness house by a
covered passage. There was a large studio on the grounds which was used
by both the painter and his sculptor son-in-law.”(1) At this time his
focus was on the production of portrait busts, many of them actors
portraying their most famous roles.
Toward the end of his
life Hartley returned to New York, where he died in 1912.
Dana E. Stoy (2003), The
Richard Stockton College of New Jersey
(1) William H. Gerdts,
Painting and Sculpture in New Jersey (Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand,
1964), pp.189-190
The Whirlwind
Hartley began
exhibiting at the [National] Academy in 1870, but fame came to him only
when his [clay] work The Whirlwind was shown in the 1878 annual.
(In 1896 he reworked the conception [in bronze], a version of which is
in the collection of the Montclair Art Museum.) The artist’s attempt at
employing violently swirling drapery to depict movement in the
traditionally static medium of bronze caused a minor controversy.
Nevertheless, critics soon realized that his was a particularly
versatile talent.
from
David B.
Dearinger,
Painting and Sculpture in the Collection of National Academy of
Design (v. 1).
Mr. Hartley’s fame is
largely due to his ideal subjects in clay, one of which, entitled “The
Whirlwind,” created no end of public discussion in 1878. This remarkable
work, the personification of the whirlwind, was first exhibited in 1878,
the year in which Mr. Hartley was made an associate of the Academy of
Design. This beautiful nude figure of a woman, involved in whirls of
drapery, appears to spin in perfect poise, in a pillar of cloud. The
criticism which it aroused was due to a certain feeling that action is
not permissible in sculpture. Mr. Hartley’s works are exceedingly
numerous, and include the statue of Ericsson, which graces Battery Park,
and a splendid statue of Daguerra, in Washington.
from Theodore Dreiser, America's Sculptors, NY
Times Article, September 25, 1898
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