Anna

Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington

Born 1876, Cambridge, MA

Died 1973, Bethel, CT

 

Anna Hyatt’s first version of Joan of Arc was shown life-size in plaster at the 1910 Paris Salon where it received Honorable Mention. In 1914, Anna Hyatt was commissioned to create her first monument – an equestrian of Joan of Arc for New York City. Placed in 1915, it overlooks Riverside Drive at 93rd Street.  Her vision of the charismatic saint was the first equestrian statue of a woman by a woman sculptor, and the first to depict her with accurate arms and armor.  Her painstaking process required making studies in clay from a model then adding the armor, saddle and harness.  Hyatt made a total of seven trial models from small to life-size.  Her commitment to historical accuracy further enhanced the realism of the work.  Working in conjunction with a medieval art specialist, she studied details of arms and armor from tomb rubbings, paintings, and funerary sculpture.  Anna Hyatt was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor and named an honorary citizen of Blois, France, where a second casting of the monument later was placed.  The small version in the Brookgreen collection is a reduction of the equestrian monument.

 

Joan of Arc

Bronze, c. 1914

48¾ x 28½ x 13 in.

Signed: Anna V. Hyatt

Founder’s mark: THE GORHAM CO FOUNDERS Q408

S.1932.020