Artist

Anna Hyatt Huntington

born Cambridge, MA 1876-died Redding Ridge, CT 1973
Media - J0001729_1b.jpg - 90756
Anna Hyatt Huntington, © Peter A. Juley & Son Collection, Smithsonian American Art Museum J0001729
Also known as
  • Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington
  • Anna Vaughn Hyatt
  • Anna Vaughn Huntington
  • Anna V. Hyatt Huntington
  • Mrs. Archer M. Huntington
  • Anna V. Hyatt
Born
Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
Died
Redding Ridge, Connecticut, United States
Active in
  • New York, New York, United States
  • South Carolina, United States
Nationalities
  • American
Biography

Sculptor and benefactress whose specialty was animal and garden sculpture. She established and designed the country's first outdoor sculpture museum, Brookgreen Gardens, in S.C.

Joan Stahl American Artists in Photographic Portraits from the Peter A. Juley & Son Collection (Washington, D.C. and Mineola, New York: National Museum of American Art and Dover Publications, Inc., 1995)

Luce Artist Biography

Anna Hyatt Huntington is known as much for her work as a patron of the arts as she is for her work as a sculptor. In 1931 she and her husband, Archer Huntington, heir to a railroad fortune, established Brookgreen Gardens, the first public sculpture garden in the United States. Huntington’s most famous works, Joan of Arc and Diana of the Chase, represent noble, idealized humans. But she had always loved animals because her father was a paleontologist and a professor of zoology at Harvard. Her sculptures capture the uninhibited actions and postures of many types of animals. Huntington chose to have the majority of these sculptures cast in aluminum, rather than bronze. At the time this was an unusual choice because of the expense, but aluminum was conveniently lightweight, and had become very popular during the 1920s and 1930s, especially in architectural sculpture. After all, for the Huntingtons, the expense was not a problem.