In the early years of the 20th century, the Cornish Artists' Colony was one of the more popular places for creative fine art activity in the eastern United States. Between 1895 and 1925, nearly 100 artists, sculptors, writers, designers, and well-known politicians chose Cornish as the area where they wanted to live, either full time or during the summer months. The natural beauty of Cornish was what originally attracted its many settlers who were fascinated by the idyllic rolling-hill scenery that resembled an Italian landscape with views across the Connecticut River Valley to Mount Ascutney in Vermont. Countless paintings, sculptures, writings, as well as the gardens live on, continuing to plant seeds of inspiration.
The name Cornish, although referencing the town in New Hampshire, is more reflective of a state of mind and a sense of beautiful place rather than a solid geographical location. The Colony was in fact spread out over Windsor, Vermont, as well as the villages of Plainfield and Cornish in New Hampshire. Windsor was the mail address for the entire area and the arrival point of most of the colonists. Most of them came from New York City, which was a grueling nine-hour train ride.
Herbert Adams (1858-1945), Winston Churchill, William Hart (1863-1937), Maxfield Parrish (1870-1966), the Shipmans, the Manships, and the Zorachs all lived in Plainfield. Ellen Shipman had calling cards that read: "Geographically in Plainfield, Socially in Cornish."
Cornish, the primary gathering spot, was considered one of the most beautifully gardened villages in the United States. The gardens were designed, created, and maintained by the artists, which made them even more appealing to the public. Edith Bolling Galt, the second Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, wrote in her book, My Memoir: "Cornish is a charming spot, a mecca for artists and cultivated people, the chief rivalry among these delightful folk seemed to be who could make the loveliest garden. "There seems to be about it all a halo of gorgeous colors from the flowers."
The migration of distinguished creative persons to the area of Cornish began in 1885, when Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907) moved there, lured by the promise to find Lincolnesque-type men who could serve as models for his sculpture of the Standing Lincoln, which he completed in 1877, and which now marks the entrance to Lincoln Park in Chicago. Upon his arrival, Saint-Gaudens rented a former inn, "Huggin's Folly", from his friend Charles Cotesworth Beaman, and eventually converted the old inn to a summer studio and house. It is now part of the Saint-Gaudens National Historic site. Some of the artists who came shortly after Saint Gaudens were his friends: Thomas Dewing (1851-1938) and Maria Dewing (1845-1927), Henry Walker (1843-1929) and the architect, etcher, and landscape painter Charles Platt (1861-1933). They were followed by others including Stephen Parrish (1846-1938), whose son, Maxfield Parrish later joined his family. From this group who either built their homes themselves or had them built, the Colony began to flourish.
Some of the more noted sculptors who followed Saint Gaudens were Herbert Adams, Daniel Chester French (1850-1931), James Earle Fraser (1876-1953), Frederick MacMonnies (1863-1937), Paul Manship (1885-1966), and William Zorach (1887-1966). French, well remembered for his famous Concord, Massachusetts Minute Man and the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC was instrumental in having Saint-Gaudens' work first accepted in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum. Fraser, who started his career as an assistant in Saint-Gaudens' studio, is best known for his western sculpture, End of the Trail. A much less well-known fact about Fraser is that in 1913, he created the U.S. Buffalo nickel, the most reproduced sculpture in the history of art. It remained in circulation until 1938. Prometheus by Paul Manship is a focal point of Rockefeller Center in New York City, and Spirit of the Dance by William Zorach is a feature of Radio City Music Hall.
Many of the painters of the Cornish Colony have distinguished reputations, but Saint Gaudens later said that he dated the establishment of the Cornish Colony to the 1886 arrival of Thomas Dewing and his wife, Maria Oakey Dewing. Because it was not a teaching colony, there was no plan or systematic recruitment to the Colony; it just happened. Distinguished painters who followed the Dewings included Henry O. Walker (1843-1929), who was known for his Library of Congress murals and his earning of a medal for his painting Gift Bearer at the Chicago's Columbian Exposition of 1893. Ironically Saint Gaudens was the creator of the medal. Edith Prellwitz (1865-1944) and her husband, Henry Prellwitz (1865-1940), William Henry Hyde (1856-1943), William Howard Hart (1863-1937), Kenyon Cox (1856-1919), John White Alexander (1856-1915), Stephen and Maxfield Parrish, and Willard Metcalf (1858-1925).
Maxfield Parrish, at the urging of his father, built his Colony home in 1898. He created a series of sixteen murals for the Curtis Publishing Company, having already completed his largest work, the North Wall Panel mural for Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney's reception room in her Long Island mansion. The North Wall Panel is unique because it features many of Parrish's Cornish friends and neighbors including his wife Lydia and his alleged mistress Susan Lewin who was his long-time model. Others in the mural are Parrish, hiding sheepishly behind Lewin's skirts, Mrs. Winston Churchill, and Mrs. Herbert Adams.
At Cornish, some modernist painters and sculptors of the early 20th century were more diverse in styles than the older members, and, many of them lived in Plainfield House owned by Lucia Fairchild Fuller (1870-1924). Paul Manship was there during the summers of 1915, 1916, 1917, and again in 1927. William and Marguerite Zorach became residents from 1918, and during that time, one of William's earliest works, First Steps, was completed. In 1922 in Cornish, Marguerite Zorach did her famous embroidery, The Family Supper, with a number of Cornish buildings depicted in the background. Paul St. Gaudens (1900-1954), the son of Annetta St. Gaudens (1869-1943) and Louis St. Gaudens, (1854-1913) fired some of his first pottery in a kiln he shared at Plainfield House with William Zorach.. Others among this group were Frederic Remington (1861-1909), Ernest Lawson (1873-1939), and Florence Shinn (1869-1940) and her husband Everett Shinn (1876-.1953).
Some arrivals, known for accomplishments other than fine art, were nationally known figures such as Winston Churchill, who wrote novels in addition to his political endeavors. He arrived in 1898 and commissioned Charles Platt to design "Harlakenden House", one of the Colony's most elaborate houses, and one which became the summer White House of President Woodrow Wilson in 1913, 1914, and 1915. Wilson had been introduced to the Colony by his first wife, painter Ellen Axson Wilson (1860-1914). Herbert Croly, founder of the New Republic, first came to the colony in 1893 and commissioned Platt design to design a house for him. Poets Percy Mackaye, William Vaughn Moody, and Witter Bynner lived at the Colony. MacKaye and his wife were known as "chickadees" because, like these birds, they did not flee during the winter. Ethel Barrymore spent the summer of 1906 at the Colony, and her arrival and ensuing distractions caused quite a sensation including a railroad wreck. During her visit, Kenyon Cox, with an affinity for allegorical subjects and a verbally aggressive disdain of modernism, had Barrymore pose with great dignity for "Justice", a mural for the Essex County Court House in Newark, New Jersey.
Many women artists were associated with the Colony, and some have been mentioned earlier. Names include Marguerite Zorach, Louise Cox, Maria Dewing, Lucia Fuller, Frances Grimes, (1869-1963) Elsie Herring (1872-1923), Frances Houston (1851-1906), Edith Prellwitz, Annetta St. Gaudens (1969-1943), Florence Shinn (1869-1940), and Bessie Vonnoh (1872-1955). Some of the Cornish Colony women were not artists but were there as wives or relatives of male artists. However, many of these women found a role in the community. Rose Nichols, a cousin of Augusta Saint- Gaudens spent her summers at Cornish, where her home became a showplace of her interest in horticulture and landscape architecture. Adeline Adams, wife of Herbert Adams, did significant writing on sculpture, and Lydia Parrish, wife of Maxfield Parrish, became noted for her skills with African-American song.
The wife of George deForest Brush (1855-1941) had a special challenge because her husband, known for his "modern madonnas", or nude portraits, usually with her as the model, also loved to paint Indians and was much attracted to Indian lore. When the couple first came to Cornish in 1887, they lived in a tepee set up in Saint-Gaudens' field near Blow-Me-Down Brook. Saint Gaudens later told the story of a party he and his friends held in the tepee when the Brushes were absent: "after having eaten all that was proper and drunk much more than was necessary, we danced in glee round the tent in which blazed the bivouac fire. Before long, the tepee went the way of all things."
Much camaraderie existed at the Colony with Augustus Saint-Gaudens being especially well liked. Most of the residents worked long days and then frequently participated in evening entertainments. An elaborate occasion was held on June 22, 1905, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the arrival of Saint Gaudens. Participants collaborated in presenting "A Masque of Ours: the gods and the Golden Bowl", an allegorical performance that combined Medieval and Renaissance music, poetry, costumes and scenery. Maxfield Parrish designed and created two large gilded masks to hold the curtains in place for the outdoor stage, and also designed the fanciful costume for his role of Chiron, a wise and benevolent centaur. The following summer, Saint Gaudens presented each of the 90 participants a plaque designed by himself.
Frederic Remington (1861-1909), best remembered for his action-packed western theme paintings and sculptures, may seem an unlikely candidate for the relatively serene pace of the Cornish Colony. He said that it was not the landscape that held him there but the fellowship of the community. He almost bought land on Prospect Hill but then decided against it.
Maxfield Parrish had the longest residency at the Colony, where he lived at Plainfield and had easy rapport with his neighbors. One of his best friends was George Ruggles, a skillful carpenter who built "The Woodchuck Hole", a studio for financially strapped artists and also built Parrish's own home. Parrish was not much interested in public attention and hated posing for photographers. Outspoken, he was overheard remarking to his father at a performance by Isadora Duncan who was past her dancing prime, that her knees were cracking something awful, "ringing out like pistol shots."
After the end of World War I, the Cornish Colony could no longer justifiably be called a colony. James Atkinson, author of the essay in the book The Cornish Colony: One-Hundred Year Celebration Exhibit, concluded: the widely variant styles the Colonists practiced suggests, it probably never was an art colony, but rather a community of congenial people. An though most of them had died by 1918, that congeniality survives today among a number of local artists committed to the art spirit.
The above essay is a
compilation of the
writings of Alma Gilbert-Smith and Judith Tankard in A Place of
Beauty: The Artists and Gardens of the Cornish Colony and The
Cornish Colony: One Hundred Year Celebration Exhibit by Alma
Gilbert-Smith
who wrote the Forward and James B. Atkinson, who wrote the main
text. The books, publications of the Cornish Museum, were used
with the permission of Alma Gilbert-Smith, Director of the Cornish
Colony Gallery and Museum.