Paul Manship

Paul Howard Manship (December 25, 1885 – January 31, 1966) was an American sculptor. He consistently created mythological pieces in a classical style, and was a major force in the Art Deco movement. He is well known for his large public commissions, including the iconic Prometheus in Rockefeller Center and the Celestial Sphere Woodrow Wilson Memorial in Geneva, Switzerland. He is also credited for designing the modern rendition of New York City's official seal.

Manship gained notice early in his career for rejecting the Beaux-Arts architecture movement and preferring linear compositions with a flowing simplicity. Additionally, he shared a summer home in Plainfield, New Hampshire, part of the Cornish Art Colony, with William Zorach for a number of years. Other members of the highly social colony were also contemporary artists. Manship created his own artist retreat on Cape Ann, developing a 15-acre site on two former granite quarries in Lanesville, a village of Gloucester, MA. A local nonprofit, the Manship Artists Residency was established in 2015 to preserve this estate as an artist residency program.

Paul Howard Manship was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, on December 25, 1885, the son of Charles H. and Mary Etta (Friend) Manship. His father, born in Mississippi, was a clerk for the St. Paul gas company, and with his wife, who was born in Pennsylvania, were parents of seven children. Charles and Mary were married in St. Paul, on July 14, 1870, and raised their family in a home they owned at 304 Nelson (later Marshall) Avenue. Paul H. Manship began his art studies at the St. Paul School of Art in Minnesota. From there he moved to Philadelphia and continued his education at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Following that he migrated to New York City where he enrolled in the Art Students League of New York, studying anatomy with George Bridgman and modeling under Hermon Atkins MacNeil. From 1905 to 1907 he served as an assistant to sculptor Solon Borglum and spent the two years after that studying with Charles Grafly and assisting Isidore Konti.

In 1909, at Konti's urging, he entered the competition for, and won, the Rome Prize and shortly thereafter decamped for Rome where he attended the American Academy from 1909 until 1912. While in Europe he became increasingly interested in Archaic art, his own work began to take on some archaic features, and he became more and more attracted to classical subjects. He also developed an interest in classical sculpture of India, and traces of that influence can be observed in his work (see Dancer and Gazelles in Gallery). Manship was one of the first artists to become aware of the vast scope of art history being newly excavated at the time and became intensely interested in Egyptian, Assyrian and pre-classical Greek sculpture.

When he returned to the United States from his European sojourn, Manship found that his style was attractive to both modernists and conservatives. His simplification of line and detail appealed to those who wished to move beyond the Beaux-Arts classical realism prevalent in the day. Also, his view of and use of a more traditional "beauty" as well as an avoidance of the more radical and abstract trends in art made his works attractive to more conservative art collectors. Manship's work is often considered to be a major precursor to Art Deco.

Manship produced over 700 works and always employed assistants of the highest quality. At least two of them, Gaston Lachaise and Leo Friedlander, went on to create significant places for themselves in the history of American sculpture.

Although not known as a portraitist, he did produce statues and busts of Theodore Roosevelt, Samuel Osgood, John D. Rockefeller, Robert Frost, Gifford Beal, and Henry L. Stimson. Manship was very adept at low relief and used these skills to produce a large number of coins and medals. Among his more prominent are the Dionysus medal, the second issue of the long running Society of Medalists; the first term inaugural medal for Franklin D. Roosevelt; and the John F. Kennedy inaugural medal. Additionally, during WW II he designed the U. S. Merchant Marine's Distinguished Service Medal, Meritorious Service Medal and Mariner's Medal.

Manship was chosen by the American Battle Monuments Commission to create monuments following both the First and Second World Wars. They are located respectively in the St. Mihiel American Cemetery and Memorial at Thiaucourt, France, and in the military cemetery at Anzio, Italy. His work was also part of the art competitions at the 1928 Summer Olympics and the 1932 Summer Olympics.