The Cornish Colony Museum Summer 2010 Exhibit
Tradition and Innovation:
125 Years of the Arts in Cornish
"Tradition and Innovation: 125 Years of the Arts in Cornish" is open until October 24th, 2010.
Augustus Saint-Gaudens,
Abraham Lincoln: The Man ("Standing Lincoln")
This year marks the 125th anniversary of the founding of the Cornish Colony. The Colony began as an art colony, a destination for a close-knit circle of sculptors and painters in Cornish, New Hampshire. Within fifteen years, however, the Colony had expanded to become not so much an art colony as a community of creative individuals. Poets, playwrights, judges, performing artists, conductors, activists and even the president of the United States joined the Cornish Colony - which was no longer confined to Cornish, but spilled over into Plainfield, New Hampshire and Windsor, Vermont.
In the spring of 1885, Charles Beaman convinced his friend Augustus Saint-Gaudens to come to Cornish for the summer. Beaman promised the sculptor "Lincoln-shaped men" (to model for Saint-Gaudens' Abraham Lincoln: The Man statue for Chicago's Lincoln Park) and a quiet, picturesque landscape in which to work. Saint-Gaudens came to Cornish, but was not immediately taken with the country house Beaman had rented him.
"My dwelling first looked more as if it had been abandoned for the murders and other crimes therein committed than as a home wherein to live, move, and have one's being. For it stood out bleak, gaunt, austere, and forbidding, without a trace of charm. And the longer I stayed in it, the more its Puritanical austerity irritated me."
"Huggins' Folly," as the home was known, must have grown on Saint-Gaudens, for he not only stayed the summer but returned year after year, purchasing the estate in 1891. In declining health, Saint-Gaudens moved permanently to Cornish in 1900, by which time nearly three dozen other households had joined him in the Cornish Colony.
The first to join Saint-Gaudens in Cornish were his studio assistants, sculptors Frederick MacMonnies, Philip Martiny, and Saint-Gaudens' brother, Louis St. Gaudens. These early colonists weren't on vacation; they spent the summer in Cornish working in Saint-Gaudens' studio, sculpting the Standing Lincoln and finishing work on Chicago's Bates Fountain. It wasn't until the following year that Cornish hosted other artists and innovators outside Saint-Gaudens' studio.
Kenyon Cox, Liberty.
The Wisconsin State Capitol building
Photograph by Ryan Wick
Artistic friends of Saint-Gaudens, including Maria and Thomas Dewing, Mary and George de Forest Brush, Henry Prellwitz, Laura and Henry O. Walker, Maud Howe and John Elliott, Charles Platt, Dennis Miller Bunker, Mary and Daniel Chester French, Adeline and Herbert Adams, Stephen and Maxfield Parrish, and Louise and Kenyon Cox, made summer homes in Cornish over the following 15 years. By 1900, everyone in the art world of New York, Boston and Philadelphia knew about the Cornish Colony, and the ambitious worked to receive an invitation.
As the years passed, more members of the cultural elite flocked to Cornish, and many of the original colonists moved on. By 1910, the make-up of the Colony was very different from what it had been even just a decade previous. Augustus Saint-Gaudens had died, and many of his assistants had returned to their city studios. Early colonists like Maria and Thomas Dewing had tired of the Colony's increasingly social nature and left for more remote areas; others preferred to summer in other colonies like Old Lyme, Connecticut, or Dublin, New Hampshire.
Yet the population of the Colony wasn't on the decline. New colonists arrived every summer, some staying for years, others moving on as autumn arrived. However, most of the new colonists weren't sculptors and painters like Saint-Gaudens' friends had been. Writers Percy MacKaye, Philip Littell, Frances Duncan, William Vaughn Moody, Witter Bynner and Louise Saunders became familiar faces around Cornish. Activists and politicians like George and Juliet Rublee, Learned Hand, and Ellen and Woodrow Wilson began summering in the so-called art colony. The Cornish Colony after 1910 was very different from the Colony of 1900, but its attraction was no less.
Maxfield Parrish, Princess Parizade Bringing Home the Singing Tree
By 1920, however, the Colony was in decline. World War I had taken a deep psychological toll in America, and there was a widespread backlash against the excesses of society, including exclusive summer colonies. The colonists who came to Cornish for the first time during the war and post-war years didn't join the Colony for the society, but rather for the peace and quiet of the rural countryside. Later colonists included artists William and Marguerite Zorach, Isabel and Paul Manship, Willard Metcalf, and Ernest Lawson, composer and conductor Walter Damrosch, dancer Isadora Duncan, and Cambridge historian Elizabeth Ellery Dana.
However, despite the low number of new colonists, the Colony was still an active and vibrant community. Dozens of Colony households were still active in 1920, and in fact, many colonists remained in Cornish through the 1930s, 1940s, and even the 1950s and 1960s. Maxfield Parrish was the last member of the Colony to leave Cornish (specifically the town of Plainfield, just north of Cornish), finally succumbing to old age in 1966. He retained the company of many of his Colony friends almost until his death, including Frances Grimes, George Rublee, Percy MacKaye, Frances and Learned Hand, Ellen Biddle Shipman, Herbert and Adeline Adams, Mabel and Winston Churchill, and Frances Duncan. Though the Colony ceased to be an important summer destination by 1930, the community certainly lived on - but as a "colony of friends" rather than an art colony.
Lawrence J. Nowlan, Robert Mondavi
As the colonists grew old and passed on, new creative individuals slowly moved into the Cornish Colony area. Author J. D. Salinger moved to Cornish in 1953, and soon formed a friendship with Frances and Learned Hand - a friendship deep enough that the Hands were made godparents of Salinger's daughter, Margaret.
In 1960, artist George Tooker moved to Hartland, Vermont, next door to Windsor; artist Gary Milek followed little over a decade later, creating an edenic studio in the hills of Windsor. In 1976, painter Aidron Duckworth created a studio and art center in Mastlands, one of the Cornish Colony homes, in the heart of Cornish. The late-1980s saw the establishment of glass-blower Simon Pearce's studio and factory on the banks of the Connecticut River in Windsor. The estate of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, now a national historic site, has hosted many sculptors-in-residence over the years, including Lawrence J. Nowlan who settled in Windsor after five summers at the Saint-Gaudens site. Painters Jane R. Ashley and William B. Hoyt also call the Cornish Colony area home, demonstrating that the spirit of artistic innovation is as vibrant today as it was one hundred years ago.
Despite the end of the official Cornish Colony over eighty years ago, there is still a strong artistic community active in the Colony towns. In association with the Cornish Colony Museum, the Cornish Colony Artists' Guild supports and promotes this artistic community, exhibiting the works of the Guild artists and sponsoring artists from outside the region to work in the area - just as the Cornish Colony members did at the turn of the last century. The spirit of the artistic expression and creativity undeniably lives on in the Colony area, continuing the traditions established by Augustus Saint-Gaudens and his colleagues 125 years ago.
The exhibition is now open, and runs through Sunday, October 24th 2010.
Located in the historic Old Windsor Fire Station
147 Main St., Windsor, VT.
(802) 674-6008
Summer Hours:
Wednesday - Sunday
11:00am to 5:00pm