Hubbry Logo
search
logo
2139171

Audrey Munson

logo
Community Hub0 Subscribers
Write something...
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Be the first to start a discussion here.
See all
Audrey Munson

Audrey Marie Munson (June 8, 1891 – February 20, 1996) was an American artist's model and film actress, considered to be "America's first supermodel." In her time, she was variously known as "Miss Manhattan", the "Panama–Pacific Girl", the "Exposition Girl" and "American Venus." She was the model or inspiration for more than twelve statues in New York City, and many others elsewhere. Munson appeared in four silent films, including unclothed in Inspiration (1915). She was one of the first American actresses to appear nude in a non-pornographic film.

Long after she and everyone else of this generation shall have become dust, Audrey Munson, who posed for three-fifths of all the statuary of the Panama–Pacific exposition, will live in the bronzes and canvasses of the art centers of the world.

— Richmond (Virginia) Times-Dispatch, August 1, 1915

Audrey Marie Munson was born in Rochester, New York, on June 8, 1891, to Edgar Munson (1854–1945), who was a streetcar conductor and Western real estate speculator descended from English Puritans, and Katherine C. "Kittie" Mahoney (1862–1958), a daughter of John and Cecilia Mahoney, Irish immigrants. Her father was from Mexico, New York, and she later lived there. Her parents divorced when she was eight, and Audrey and her mother moved to Providence, Rhode Island.

In 1909, mother and daughter moved to Washington Heights in New York City, where the 17-year-old Audrey sought a career as an actress and chorus girl. Her first role on Broadway was as a "footman" in The Boy and The Girl at the Aerial Gardens of the New Amsterdam Theatre, which ran from May 31 – June 19, 1909. She also appeared in The Girl and the Wizard, Girlies and La Belle Parée.

While window-shopping on Fifth Avenue with her mother she was spotted by photographer Felix Benedict Herzog, who asked her to pose for him at his studio in the Lincoln Arcade Building on Broadway and 65th Street. Herzog introduced her to his friends in the art world. She posed for muralist William de Leftwich Dodge, who gave her a letter of introduction to Isidore Konti. Konti was her first sculptor and her first nude modeling. From this point, Munson would pose for several well-known artists, including painter Francis Coates Jones, illustrators Harrison Fisher, Archie Gunn, and Charles Dana Gibson, and photographers Herzog and Arnold Genthe, but she predominately modeled for sculptors.

Munson's first acknowledged credit is Konti's marble statuary called Three Graces, unveiled in the new Grand Ballroom at the Hotel Astor in Times Square in September 1909. She posed for all three Graces. Soon after that and for the next decade, Munson became the model of choice for the first tier of American sculptors, posing for a long list of freestanding statuary, monuments, and allegorical architectural sculpture on state capitols and other major public buildings. According to The Sun in 1913, "Over a hundred artists agree that if the name of Miss Manhattan belongs to anyone in particular it is to this young woman."

By 1915, she was so well-established that she became Alexander Stirling Calder's model of choice when he became Director of Sculpture for the Panama–Pacific International Exposition held in San Francisco that year. Her figure was "ninety times repeated against the sky" on one building alone, atop the colonnades of the Court of the Universe, roughly modeled on St. Peter's Square in the Vatican. In fact, Munson posed for three-fifths of the sculpture created for the event and earned fame as the "Panama–Pacific Girl".

See all
User Avatar
No comments yet.