Brenda Putnam (June 3, 1890 – October 18, 1975) was an American sculptor, teacher and author.
Biography
She was the daughter of Librarian of CongressHerbert Putnam and his wife Charlotte Elizabeth Munroe. Her older sister Shirley and she were granddaughters of publisher George Palmer Putnam.[2] She attended the National Cathedral School in Washington, D.C., where she first was taught to sculpt.[3] She also trained as a classical pianist, and toured with violinist Edith Rubel and cellist Marie Roemaet as the Edith Rubel Trio.[4][5]
Early in her career, Putnam was noted for her busts of children and for garden and fountain figures.[6] She exhibited an overtly sensual piece at the National Academy of Design in 1915, Charmides [Dialogue], a nude woman and man asleep together, which was described as "Rodin-like".[7] To mark the grave of her close friend, pianist Anne Simon, she created a profound work: the Simon Memorial (1917)—a nude male angel ecstatically rising from the clouds.[8]
Rock Creek Cemetery, Washington, is a supremely beautiful spot wherein are erected many striking memorials. Within recent years there has grown to be another place of pilgrimage—the memorial to Mrs. Otto Torney Simon. The triumph of her passing from "life to life" ... is symbolized in the Simon Memorial wrought by Brenda Putnam. Until recently, I had never heard of this winged figure interpreted by one who knows the full significance of the statue. [T]his angel with wide flung hands and upward gaze symbolizes liberation of our faculties and our abilities, the enfranchisement of the soul released by the kindly gift of Death."[9]
When playing, he always closes his eyes, tilts his head a little to the side, and seemingly loses himself in the magic of his music. It is this characteristic pose, with eyes closed, that Brenda Putnam has captured perfectly. This portrait bust, which one can sincerely say is magnificently done, is in the Museum of the Hispanic Society, New York, and a replica is in Spain.[9]
Putnam grew dissatisfied with conventional academic sculpture.[6] Her desire to pursue "a more modern aesthetic" brought her to Italy in 1927, where she studied under Libero Andreotti, and later under Alexander Archipenko in New York City.[6]
She collaborated with architect Paul Philippe Cret on the Art DecoPuck Fountain (1930–1932), for the west garden of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.[15] Inscribed below her Figure of Puck is the elf's famous line from A Midsummer Night's Dream: "What fooles these mortals be." The marble sculpture, damaged by acid rain and vandalism, was removed in 2001, restored, and placed inside the library. It was used to cast an aluminum replica that was placed atop the fountain in 2002.[16]
Putnam seriously injured her arm in an industrial accident during World War II.[14] She gave up creating large-scale works and concentrated on busts and smaller pieces.[20]
Putnam had made the stylistic transition from Academic to Art Deco,[15] but she was no fan of post-war Modernism. In 1952 the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced its intention to expand its holdings of contemporary sculpture. On behalf of the conservative National Sculpture Society (of which she was a fellow), Putnam vehemently advocated that The Met purchase realist works.[22]
She was elected an associate member of the National Academy in 1934, and an academician in 1936.[6] She was elected to the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors in [year], and designed them a 7-sided Art Deco medal in 1941 when they changed their name to the National Association of Women Artists.[9] She was elected to the National Sculpture Society in 1919, served as its secretary, 1933-1936,[9] and later was elected a fellow of the society.[31]
Teacher and author
Putnam had a 30-year career teaching at various institutions and privately.[6] She incorporated that experience into her book, The Sculptor's Way: A Guide to Modeling and Sculpture, first published in 1939.[32] It is still considered a classic on the subject and was in print as recently as 2003.[33] She also was the author of Animal X-Rays: A Skeleton Key to Comparative Anatomy (New York: G.P. Putnams's Sons, 1947).
Putnam never married, but maintained long friendships with a number of her students. She retired to Wilton, Connecticut in the early 1950s. She moved to Concord, New Hampshire in 1971, where she died in 1975.[6]
Mid-Summer (1935, carved in marble 1946), Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida.[50] A female nude reclining on a bed of summer vegetables.[51]
Bas-relief lunette: Sorting the Mail (1936–37, plaster), Post Office, Caldwell, New Jersey.[52] The lunette is now in storage.[53]
Bas-relief mural: Mississippi Divides the Southwest from the Northeast (1936–39, plaster), Post Office, St. Cloud, Minnesota.[54] Removed to Minnesota Department of Manpower Services Building.
^ abcdBeatrice Gilman Proske, The Early Years of the Hispanic Society of America (The J. Paul Getty Trust, 1995), pp. 34, 52. Proske was one of Brenda Putnam's students.
^ abcdCharlotte Streifer Rubinstein, American Women Sculptors: A History of Women Working in Three Dimensions (G.K. Hall, 1990), pp. 248-49.
^Nicole M. Miller, "The Folger's Happy Mending", The Washington Post, January 10, 2002.
^Mantle Fielding & Glen B Opitz, eds., Mantle Fielding's Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors and Engravers, (Poughkeepsie, NY: Apollo Press, 1986), p.
^Alan Filreis, Counter-revolution of the Word (University of North Carolina Press, 2012), pp. 225-26.
^John W. Leonard, Woman's Who's Who of America: A Biographical Dictionary of Contemporary Women of the United States and Canada, 1914-1915 (American Commonwealth Company, 1914), p. 666.
^Patricia M. O'Donnell & Jonathan Fairbanks, Oldfields, Indianapolis Museum of Art: Estate, Sculpture & Horticultural Study (Report for the Indianapolis Museum of Art, 1996).
