Paul Manship

American Paul Howard was the father of American sculptor John Paul Manship (1927-2000). Paul Howard was one of the first artists to be aware of art history. Because of his color blindness, he had to give up his original plan to become a painter. He received his education in St. Paul at the Art Students League of New York, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. He was particularly impressed by the Egyptian, Assyrian and pre-classical Greek sculptures with which he had become acquainted during a travel grant to the Mediterranean in 1909-12. With his mythological and animal representations, Manship is regarded as one of the main precursors of the Art Deco. Manship also produced a variety of coins and medals.

Manship produced statues and busts of prominent persons such as Theodore Roosevelt, Samuel Osgood, John D. Rockefeller, Robert Frost, Gifford Beal and Henry L. Stimson. One of his other fields was to create monuments following both the two World Wars.

The 1926 sculpture entered in 1928 is originally titled Indian Hunter and His Dog. At the art competitions a plaster model was exhibited. The original was a commission for a life-size fountain in a park in his hometown of St. Paul. In the meantime, the sculpture has returned to its original location in Cochran Park. The group was later cast in different sizes. For instance, the bronze donated to the Smithsonian American Art Museum by the artist measures 59 × 60 × 18 cm. The fact that the sculpture was exhibited in the stadium in Amsterdam and not in the museum suggests that it was a larger version. It can be assumed that the Indian Runner submitted in 1932 is the same sculpture, possibly in a different size and / or as a bronze, and was therefore only shown “hors concours”. The same applies to Manship’s sculpture Atalanta. The approximately 73 cm tall bronze figure dates back to 1921 and was therefore not eligible for the competition. Atalanta was a fast female runner in Greek mythology.