Artist

Bessie Stough Callender

born Wichita, KS 1889-died New York City 1951
Media - callender_bessie.jpg - 89963
Courtesy Bessie S. Callender Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Also known as
  • Bessie Stough
Born
Wichita, Kansas, United States
Died
New York, New York, United States
Biography

Born and raised on a farm near Wichita, Kansas, where she developed a fondness for animals, Bessie [Callender] married a newspaper reporter, Harold Callender, and moved to New York City in the early 1920s. She took life classes under George Bridgman at the Art Students League and then studied modeling from life at the art school of the Cooper Union. When her husband was assigned to Paris in 1926, she studied modeling with Antoine Bourdelle at the Academie de la Grande Chaumière and later worked in the studios of José de Creeft and Georges Hilbert, an important animalier, from whom she received instruction in stone carving. Callender became a devotee of direct carving. Her main subjects were animals observed at the Jardin des Plantes and, later, at the London Zoo. In late 1929 she moved to London, where she worked for the next ten years, until a cancer operation forced her to stop sculpting. Her works were exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris, the Royal Academy in London, the Walker Gallery in Liverpool, and the Fine Arts Museum in Glasgow. In 1951, the year of her death, her husband donated seven sculptures by the artist to the National Museum of American Art [now the Smithsonian American Art Museum].

National Museum of American Art (CD-ROM) (New York and Washington D.C.: MacMillan Digital in cooperation with the National Museum of American Art, 1996)

Works by this artist (7 items)

Bessie Stough Callender, Torso, ca. 1930, granite on marble base, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Harold Callender, 1960.8.5
Torso
Dateca. 1930
granite on marble base
On view
Bessie Stough Callender, Falcon, 1937, marble, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Harold Callender, 1960.8.2
Falcon
Date1937
marble
On view
Bessie Stough Callender, Baboon, ca. 1930, limestone, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Given as a memorial to the artist by her husband, Harold Callender, 1951.11.3
Baboon
Dateca. 1930
limestone
On view
Bessie Stough Callender, Ram, ca. 1930, granite, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Harold Callender, 1960.8.3
Ram
Dateca. 1930
granite
On view