Emile Brunel Studio and Sculpture Garden
The Emile Brunel Sculpture Garden and Studio , or also known as the Totem Indian Trading Post and Brunel Park , is a sculpture garden with three buildings and seven sculptures on Da Silva Road in Boiceville , New York .
Brunel was a French immigrant and artist who became fascinated with Indian art while traveling in the western United States in the early 20th century . After a successful career as a photographer, he bought a piece of land in the Catskills and built a holiday facility on it, which was decorated with sculptures whose style was based on Indian art . The facility closed when Route 28 was widened at the end of World War II , but the sculpture garden remained and became a popular attraction along the way.
In 1929 Brunel built a house with a studio on the property. The style was based on the European farmhouses, which was architecturally very unusual for this area. His wife and daughter maintained the sculpture garden after Brunel's death in 1944 and ran a souvenir shop until 1985. The artist's home and studio are historically intact and were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1999.
estate
The studio and sculpture garden are located on 5300 m² of land at the intersection of Da Silva Road and Route 28, about one kilometer south of the hamlet of Boiceville. The area is mostly forested and the terrain slopes gently west to Esopus Creek . There are several other buildings on the site of the previous holiday facility. These are a little further uphill and east and south on Route 28. The land on the other side of the highway is vacant because it belongs to the New York City Department of Environmental Protection and serves as a buffer zone for the Ashokan Reservoir to the south .
There are seven objects on the property (the sculptures and totem poles are objects of art according to the criteria for classification in the National Register of Art) and three buildings, the studio, a shed and a log cabin on the other side of Da Silva Road. The latter was built as a souvenir shop in 1960 and was therefore not old enough to be considered a contributing factor to the property's historical value.
studio
The studio on the west side of Da Silva Road is a two-story timber - frame building with an open cellar. The facade consists of rough plaster ; it are reliefs integrated with Indian motifs, as well as a profile of Brunel and his wife with the inscription " Le don de Dieu " ( French for "the gift of God"). On the gable roof with a wide overhang eaves two sit on the south side bay windows with pediments. The window arrangement is irregular and therefore asymmetrical.
Inside, the house consists of a darkroom , garage and storage room on the ground floor . Above there is a dining room, kitchen and living room, the bedrooms are in the attic . The area around the open fireplace on the ground floor is plastered; large birds are engraved here. The interior fittings made of fiberboard , simple molded parts, the beamed ceiling and the built-in cabinets are original.
Sculpture garden
A short walk west of the house climbs slightly to the nearby sculpture garden. This is dominated by three large sculptures made of shaped wire netting , which was then filled with stones and finally covered with concrete. To the south of the garden stands the nine-meter-high male stone figure Moon Haw Haw with a single feather on the back of her head and with arms outstretched and palms up, looking at the sky over the Burroughs Range to the west. It is complemented by Natache , a similarly designed seated female figure who holds up one hand. A toddler is in a carrying frame on her back.
The third sculpture, The Great White Spirit , is in the north corner. It is a tree with splayed roots that is as tall as Moon Haw Haw . At its upper end, four faces symbolize the world religions Buddhism , Christianity , Islam and Judaism . They correspond to four faces at the foot of the sculpture, which embody the sins of jealousy, greed, hatred and lust. The work was Brunel's last work and is also his tombstone, as his ashes are trapped in it.
There are two large totem poles that are designed in a similar fashion. A third fell over and was partially buried. Smaller sculptures, including a nesting pelican and a seated chief , are also located in the sculpture garden.
history
Born in Châteauneuf , Brunel came to the United States in 1904 at the age of 30. He went to the western United States , where he made his way as a wandering painter for a few years, focusing on scenes of the fading Wild West and creating signs or posters for circuses and whiskey producers. Shortly after his arrival, he met his future wife, Gladyse McCloud, a then 14-year-old girl who worked as a cartoonist in one of these circus companies. He promised her to get her as soon as he achieved success.
He turned to photography and chose the Indians as the main subject of his work. When his photographs began to sell, he returned to New York City. It is here that he came into contact with the early film industry when he met Cecil B. DeMille , with whom he later worked. He produced the film The Hand of God , which he also directed. Brunel founded the New York Institute of Photography and perfected development processes.
Building on this, he began working as a press photographer for the New York Times Magazine and opened a chain of photo studios in the city. So he had become successful and brought Gladyse, who was still a teenager, to him. Then the two married.
His success allowed him to buy the land around an existing hotel in the Catskills in 1918. After all, he owned 31 hectares of land around the current site, which he operated under the name Chalet India . He built tennis and croquet facilities , bridle paths and, according to local lore, the first Olympic- size swimming pool in Ulster County .
The resort was very successful and many well-known people were guests, including its location on New York State Route 28 , which winds through the Catskills on the way to the Adirondacks . At that time, automobile tourism was in its early stages. Brunel exhibited Native American art and artifacts that he himself had collected during his stay in the West. In addition, there were his own sculptures, which he had started with in the years after the acquisition of the land. In 1929 he built a house with a studio in the style of the Arts and Crafts Movements , evoking the memory of the farmhouses in his native France. This house was unusual for New York in that most of the older houses reflected Dutch and English vernacular architecture .
Chalet India prospered for more than two decades, but in 1944 two events led to its decline. The state announced that it was planning to move Route 28, which would affect the future of the facility - and Brunel died. The resort was closed before the end of World War II the following year.
The daughter of Gladyse and Brunels continued to sell goods made by local Indian tribes. She parceled out the property and sold it and fasted the sculptures distributed on the property together in her garden. In addition, around 1960, nine years after her mother's death, she built the log cabin that served as a warehouse. The daughter ran the shop until her death in 1985; until 1987 the granddaughter continued the activity and finally sold. The shop was still open for about ten years, but closed around the turn of the millennium. It has not reopened since then.
See also
Footnotes
- ↑ a b c d e f John Bonafide: National Register of Historic Places nomination, Emile Brunel Studio and Sculpture Garden ( English ) New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation . January 1999. Archived from the original on October 6, 2012. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved April 13, 2010.
- ↑ a b Victoria Bartley: A Totem's Tale . In: Hudson Valley . December 2008.
Coordinates: 41 ° 59 ′ 59 ″ N , 74 ° 15 ′ 50 ″ W.