Mary Lawrence Tonetti

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Mary Trimble Lawrence Tonetti (born December 1868 in New York City , † March 14, 1945 in Palisades , New York State ) was an American sculptor .

Life

Mary Lawrence was born in New York City in December 1868 to Henry Effingham Lawrence and his wife Lydia Greene Underhill Lawrence. She was a descendant of John Lawrence, who was the 7th and 19th Mayors of New York City in the 17th century, and Captain James Lawrence, a veteran of the British-American War of 1812 and had several siblings. Her family was wealthy and her father built a Cliffside summer house in Snedens Landing, which is part of Palisades , which the family later lived in all year round and which is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places .

education

Her artistic skills were encouraged early on. When she was seven, her family arranged for budding artist Augustus Saint-Gaudens to come to Snedens Landing and give drawing lessons to her and other children. As she got older, she continued to take classes with Saint-Gaudens in his New York studio.

Mary Lawrence traveled to Europe from 1886 to 1887 with her sister Edith and her aunt Annie Underhill. They spent the summer in Belgium and Germany, after which they settled in Paris. There she studied at the Académie Julian . Through her acquaintance with Saint-Gaudens, she quickly got to know many well-known artists in Paris, attended exhibitions with Mary Fairchild Low and was invited by Auguste Rodin to his studio a week after her arrival in Paris . She spent the winter with her family in Italy, studied a second year at the Académie Julian and returned to America in 1888. There she resumed her studies at the Art Students League of New York at Saint-Gaudens. She later taught there, worked as an assistant to Saint-Gaudens and had her own studio.

World's Columbian Exposition

Sculpture of Columbus 1893

In the fall of 1891 she was given the task of creating a sculpture of Christopher Columbus for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago . She was suggested for this role by Saint-Gaudens, who worked as artistic advisor to Daniel Burnham , the chief architect of the Chicago World's Fair. This was a great honor, the task was entrusted to her directly by the commission of the exhibition, not by Bertha Honoré Palmer 's Chicago Woman's Club, as is the case with most other women who worked as artists . She got to know the artists of the White Rabbits group, who were employed by Lorado Taft to help with the artistic design of several buildings, including the “Woman's Building” and the “Horticultural Building”, but had also been given their own work. She joined the group. Her sculpture of Columbus, like many other sculptures, was made in plaster and later not cast in bronze, so that it was destroyed by the weather.

Marriage and later years

After the work on the exhibition was finished, Mary Lawrence returned to Paris. She resumed her studies at the Académie Julian, attended soirées and received many invitations. She was the guest of Charles Dana Gibson and James Whistler . At a ball at Gibson's in 1893, she met the sculptor François Tonetti. Tonetti worked as an assistant to Frederick MacMonnies . Lawrence and Tonetti were married in 1900. Saint-Gaudens spoke out against marriage because he feared that Mary Lawrence might give up her work as a sculptor.

Kykuit, front with gable by Tonetti

Mary and François Tonetti moved into the former Murray Hill Presbyterian Church, which had been converted into a residential building with a spacious studio. Mary Lawrence Tonetti now worked as a sculptor together with her husband. She was involved in the work for the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo . When John D. Rockefeller built his Kykuit house in Pocantico Hills, a settlement in Mount Pleasant , François Tonetti designed a series of works for the house and property. When the facade of the building was changed in 1913, Tonetti was commissioned to design a gable for the front facade. The model for the angel figures was the Tonetti's youngest daughter, Alexandra. Mary Tonetti took care of the completion of the figures.

But she also increasingly looked after the family, bought land in Snedens Landing at her Cliffside house, created an “Italian garden” and renovated the building. She was assisted in this work by the architect Charles McKim . François Tonetti returned to France to take part in World War I as a medic. There he fell ill with pneumonia and returned sick to America after the end of the war, where he died in 1920 at the age of only 56. Mary Tonetti now raised the children on her own.

Through the career of her daughter Anne Tonetti Gugler, who worked as an actress in the 1920s, Tonetti met Guthrie McClintic and his wife Katharine Cornell , with whom she became friends. Cornell rented a house on the Tonetti's property. She used the house for 25 years until she built her own on the property. Many film and stage actors such as Ginger Rogers , Madeleine Carroll , Laurette Taylor , Burgess Meredith and Maurice Evans came to Snedens Landing as guests and sometimes stay there for several weeks.

Mary Tonetti finally moved completely to Snedens Landing, she sold the house in New York and had some of the sculptures brought to Snedens Landing that night and buried in secret. These were never found. Mary and François Tonetti had six children, the eldest died shortly after birth. Mary Lawrence Tonetti died on March 14, 1945 at her home in Snedens Landing. Her grave is in Palisades Cemetery in Palisades, New York.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Henry Effingham Lawrence (1829–1890) - Find A ... In: findagrave.com. Retrieved June 19, 2018 .
  2. ↑ a b The Cascade | Palisades Interstate Park - New Jersey. In: njpalisades.org. Retrieved June 19, 2018 .
  3. ^ Mary Lawrence Tonetti - Artist Biography for Mary Lawrence Tonetti. In: askart.com. Retrieved June 19, 2018 .
  4. ↑ a b c Demeter’s Choice: A Portrait of Artist Mary Lawrence Tonetti . In: American Girls Art Club In Paris. . . and Beyond . 2014 ( americangirlsartclubinparis.com ).
  5. ↑ Leon J. Podles's Blog - Mary Trimble Lawrence, Sculptress - June 06, 2016 10:23 am. In: goodreads.com. Retrieved June 19, 2018 .
  6. ↑ https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cwfs/hd_cwfs.htm. In: metmuseum.org. Retrieved June 19, 2018 .
  7. ↑ a b c d People | 10964 - The Palisades Newsletter. In: palisadesny.com. Retrieved June 19, 2018 .
  8. ^ New York Magazine . New York Media, LLC, 1990, pp. 39 ( books.google.de ).

Web links

Commons : Mary Lawrence (sculptor)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Tonetti, Mary Lawrence
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tonetti, Mary Trimble Lawrence (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American sculptress
DATE OF BIRTH December 1868
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH March 14, 1945
Place of death Palisades , New York State