Enid Yandell
Enid Yandell | |
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Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. | |
Resting place | Cave Hill Cemetery Louisville, Kentucky, U.S. |
Parent |
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Relatives | David Wendel Yandell (uncle) Lunsford Yandell (grandfather) |
Enid Yandell (October 6, 1869 – June 12, 1934)
Yandell specialized in portrait busts and monuments.[2] She created numerous portraits, garden pieces and small works as well as public monuments. The sculpture collection at the Speed Art Museum in her hometown includes a large number of her works in plaster. She contributed to The Woman's Building at the Chicago World's Fair.
Artistic training
Yandell was the eldest daughter of Dr. Lunsford Pitts Yandell Jr. and Louise Elliston Yandell of Louisville, Kentucky. Her sister Maud Yandell (1871–1962) also never married; Elsie Yandell (1874–1939) married the American architect Donn Barber and moved to New York; and, their younger brother, Lunsford P. Yandell III (1878–1927) married Elizabeth Hosford of Connecticut and lived in Kentucky. Enid Yandell completed degrees in chemistry and art at Hampton College, a school for girls in Louisville. She then attended the Art Academy of Cincinnati, where she completed a four-year program in two years, winning a first-prize medal upon graduation in 1889. Yandell also took advantage of apprenticeships with noted sculptors of the day. These included Lorado Taft, Philip Martiny and Karl Bitter.
Yandell was one of a group of women sculptors known as the
In 1894, Yandell went to Paris, where she studied with
In 1898 Yandell became the first woman member to join the National Sculpture Society. In 1899 her sister Elsie married the architect Donn Barber. Yandell died on June 12, 1934,[6] in Boston, Massachusetts, and is buried in Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky, Section O, Lot 396.
Daniel Boone sculpture
Sculptures by Yandell include a nine-foot statue of Daniel Boone, which was commissioned by the Filson Club of Louisville and exhibited outside the Kentucky Building at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair.[7] Yandell completed a plaster cast which was shown at several exhibitions before C. C. Bickel finally arranged to have the work cast in bronze for the city of Louisville in 1906. The Daniel Boone sculpture survived the Super Outbreak of tornadoes on April 3, 1974, and is now located in Cherokee Park, Louisville, Kentucky. Another casting of the Boone statue was made in 1967 and placed on the campus of Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, Kentucky.
Tennessee Centennial International Exposition
At age 27, Yandell was commissioned to create a monumental sculpture of Pallas Athena for the 1897 Tennessee Centennial and International Exposition. The Greek sculpture was in keeping with Nashville's nickname as "The Athens of the South."[8]
Yandell created the statue in her studio in Paris. She based the design on the Pallas de Velletri, found near Rome, Italy, in the eighteenth century, which was itself a copy of an ancient Greek statue. It depicted Athena with one arm raised victoriously and the other arm with upturned palm in a gesture of welcome. The 40-foot sculpture was shipped to Nashville in sections by ship. The statue was assembled in Nashville and stood before the exposition's Fine Arts Building, which was built as a full-size replica of the Parthenon in Athens.[8]
Like other statues in the exhibition, Yandell's Athena was made from staff, a non-permanent building material. The sculpture was never cast in bronze and within a year it deteriorated to pieces.[8] The Nashville Parthenon was rebuilt in permanent materials, and still stands today. An entirely different Athena statue by Alan LeQuire, unveiled in 1990, stands inside the Nashville Parthenon.
The Wheelmen's Bench
The Wheelmen's Bench is another significant sculpture by Yandell. Also in Louisville, it is located at the intersection of Third Street and
- Erected 1897 by Ky. Div. of League of American Wheelmen to honor cycling pioneer A. D. Ruff (1827–96) of Owingsville, Ky. The League's oldest member, he had bicycled to Yellowstone National Park in 1893. Marble fountain and stone bench, known to generations of cyclists as "Wheelmen's Bench," designed by famed sculptor Enid Yandell.
- Cycle Carnival, 1897 – On October 8, 1897, a parade of 10,000 cyclists passed here to celebrate a new cinder bicycling path along Southern Parkway. Viewed by 50,000 spectators, parade began at Third and Broadway and ended at Iroquois Cycle Club. Many cyclists were in costume; ladies wore bloomers. Bugles and cannon fire marked the parade's progress. Presented by The Louisville Bicycle Club – 1997.
Struggle of Life
Enid Yandell's sculpture the "Struggle of life" was commissioned by Italian diplomat Paul Bajnotti, of Turin, Italy, in memory of his wife Carrie Brown. Dedicated in 1899, the Carrie Brown Memorial (also referred to as the Bajnotti Fountain) is located in
Ninigret
Yandell produced a sculpture of Ninigret, a 17th-century sachem of the eastern Niantic tribe, which was erected in 1914 in the seaside town of Watch Hill, Rhode Island. The sculpture was commissioned by Frances Canby Griscom (Biddle) in memory of her husband Clement Acton Griscom, a 19th-century shipping magnate. Ninigret is portrayed holding a fish in each hand. The sculpture was originally part of a water fountain for the village horses: water flowed from the mouths of the fishes into a trough.
The statue was moved several times; during the 1950s, it was painted gold and stood in front of the library.[11] In 2016 the statue was moved to the north end of Village Park on Bay Street in Watch Hill, facing the harbor.[11] The fountain was restored with a new pump, and for the first time in 65 years water once again flows out of the mouths of the two fish held by the chief.[11]
Social activism
In addition to her work as an artist, Yandell was committed to improving the lives of others. She contributed to the education of future artists by founding in 1908 the Branstock School in Edgartown on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts.[12] The art school functioned for several summers until her death in 1934. Yandell also worked with Appui Aux Artists, an organization which provided affordable meals for those involved in the arts and their families.
Yandell was an active supporter of women's suffrage, offering her art in exhibits for fundraising efforts. She also campaigned for Calvin Coolidge in Massachusetts when he ran for office on a pro-woman suffrage platform in the early 1900s.[13]
During World War I, Enid Yandell became involved with the
Death
Enid Yandell died in Boston on June 12, 1934. She was buried in Louisville, Kentucky, at the Cave Hill Cemetery with her family and next to her sister Maud.[14]
In 2019 Cave Hill Cemetery is part of a Louisville-wide celebration of the legacy of Enid Yandell as a sculptor, social activist, and suffrage leader.
References
- ^ Some published sources say she was born in 1870; her gravestone and her passport states 1869. The 1870 Census shows her as "8/12" months old under the name Elizibeth Yandell. The information was collected June 1870, which matches a birth of October 1869. Also, her gravestone and obituary indicate her death was on June 12th but printed sources indicate June 13th.
- ^ a b "Yandell, Enid". Benezit Dictionary of Artists. Oxford University Press. October 31, 2011.
- ISBN 0915864673.
- ^ Yandell, Enid; Hayes, Laura. "Three Girls in A Flat". A Celebration of Women Writers. Penn Libraries. Retrieved March 9, 2017.
- ^ "Overlooked No More: Lillias Campbell Davidson, Who Founded the First Women's Cycling Organization". Retrieved June 14, 2018.
- ^ "MISS YANDELL, SCULPTOR, DIES". Boston Globe. June 13, 1934.
- ^ a b Decker, Juilee (2019). Enid Yandell: Kentucky's Pioneer Sculptor. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.
- ^ a b c Pollack, Deborah (August 31, 2015). "Kentucky's Sculptor Enid Yandell". Archives of American Art Blog. Archives of American Art. Retrieved November 7, 2016.
- ^ Mullet, Mary B. "Women and the Pan-American, Harper's Weekly, 1901". Doing the Pan. Retrieved September 26, 2019.
- ^ Clara Erskine Clement, Women in the Fine Arts from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D., BiblioBazaar LLC, Clara Erskine Clement Waters
Edition (large print), 2007, p. 364. ISBN 978-1-4264-5835-4
- ^ a b c Faulkner, Dale (June 12, 2016). "Statue faces water once again after park restoration". The Westerly Sun. Archived from the original on November 9, 2016. Retrieved November 8, 2016.
- ^ "Historical Perspective: Enid Yandell and the Branstock School". Martha's Vineyard Times. March 11, 2014. Retrieved March 9, 2017.
- ^ "Women's Suffrage". Calvin Coolidge Presidential Library & Museum. August 26, 2010. Retrieved March 9, 2017.
- ^ "Enid Yandell". FindAGrave. Retrieved March 9, 2017.
- ^ Platt, Pam (June 20, 2019). "Louisville honoring trailblazing sculptor who broke the mold for women". Courier-Journal. Louisville, Kentucky. Retrieved August 26, 2019.
Additional resources
- Caldwell, Désirée (1982). Enid Yandell and the Branstock School. Providence, R.I.: Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design.
- Decker, Juilee (2015). "Kentucky's Frontier Sculptor and "Bachelor Maid"". In McEuen, Melissa A.; Appleton, Thomas H. (eds.). Kentucky Women: Their Lives and Times. Athens: University of Georgia Press. pp. 196–218.
- Dennison, Mariea Caudill (2003–2004). "Babies for Suffrage: The Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture by Women Artists for the Benefit of the Woman Suffrage Campaign". Woman's Art Journal. 24 (2): 26. JSTOR 1358783.
- Opitz, Glenn B. (1986). Mantle Fielding's Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors & Engravers. Poughkeepsie, NY: Apollo Books.
- Rubinstein, Charlotte Streifer (1990). American Women Sculptors. Boston, Mass.: G.K.Hall & Co. ISBN 9780816187324.
External links
- Works by or about Enid Yandell at Internet Archive
- Works by Enid Yandell at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Filson Historical Society: Enid Yandell at the Wayback Machine (archived September 28, 2007)
- Enid Yandell Papers, 1875–1982 at the Filson Historical Society