Theodore Spicer Simson

Theodore Frederick Spicer Simson (born June 25, 1871 in Le Havre , † February 1, 1959 in Coconut Grove , Florida , now a district of Miami) was a British-American sculptor.

Life

Theodore Spicer Simson was the eldest son of the couple Frederick and Dora Spicer Simson. He spent five years of his childhood in Tasmania , where his parents raised sheep in 1874. After that, the family returned - one of his siblings was Geoffrey Basil Spicer Simson , who would later serve in the Navy - back to France. The children went to boarding schools in England. In 1882 Theodore Spicer Simson was sent to a school in Neuwied am Rhein ; In 1884 he returned to France. From 1892 to 1895 he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris . On July 1, 1896, he married Margaret Schmidt in Washington, DC , whom he had met in France. In 1899 the couple moved to Paris, where they lived on Montparnasse and had contact with numerous artists and celebrities of their time, such as Leo and Ella Mielziner , Henri Monod , James Stephens and Lyonel Feininger, for whose youngest son Theodore Lux he was the sponsor .

Theodore Spicer Simson became very famous as a sculptor. In 1911 he created a portrait medallion of William Howard Taft , which was later used in a reduced form as an election campaign button. In 1914 he copied Woodrow Wilson's right hand. This work was intended to be used as propaganda in the First World War , in which Spicer Samson's brothers Geoffrey Basil and Noel - who fell in France in 1915 - fought. But the plan was not implemented. Special haste was required for the portrait of the Polish pianist Ignacy Paderewski , who was elected the first president of the independent country of Poland between his sessions with Spicer Simson. From 1921 he worked on a cycle "Men of Letters of the British Isles". His portraits were complemented by essays by Stuart P. Sherman .

During a visit to the United States in 1925, Spicer Simson built a house in Coconut Grove, which he rented out during the economic depression to live in France himself. The Spicer Simson couple were also in France when the Second World War broke out . Theodore Spicer Simson, who at that time still had British citizenship, was arrested by the Germans in 1940. In the spring of 1941 he was released again. He spent the rest of the war in Les Volets Verts . In 1946 he returned to Coconut Grove, where he created a portrait of Robert Frost, among other things . Spicer Simson spent the rest of his life in Coconut Grove, where he died after a long illness.

Work and afterlife

Theodore Spicer Simson received numerous awards, including in 1951 in New York the election as an associate member ( ANA ) of the National Academy of Design , and in 1955 a lifetime achievement award from the National Sculpture Society. In 1956 he received the J. Stanford Saltus Medal from the American Numismatic Society. He was a member of the Numismatic Association and the National Sculpture Association as well as an associate of the Salon des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Spicer Samson's works can be found in numerous private and public collections. So is z. B. A portrait of Alexander Graham Bell on the National Geographic Society building in Washington DC The American Museum of Natural History has a portrait of Hervey J. Allen .

In 1960, his widow gave his medallions and personal papers, including an extensive correspondence, to the University of Miami library . This resulted in an exhibition that was presented in 1971. The collection is now located in the library's Special Collections Department and is available for academic research. The medallions show the portraits of numerous personalities from literature and politics and were all worked from life. These include images by David Fairchield , Padraic Colum , Henry Ford , Sir Ernest Rutherford , Theodore Dreiser and Franklin Delano Roosevelt . Spicer Simson has also created works for the National Academy of Sciences , Princeton University , the Guggenheim Foundation and the US Congress .

Spicer Simson wrote the autobiography A Collector of Characters , the typescript of which is also in the collection.

Other parts of his estate are kept at Princeton.

Web links

• Life dates
• Life and works

Individual evidence

1. ^ Theodore Spicer-Simson collection, 1906-1979 in University of Miami Special Collections, accessed May 20, 2018
2. ↑ nationalacademy.org: Past Academicians "S" / Spicer-Simson, Theodore ANA 1951 ( Memento of the original from March 20, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on July 16, 2015) 
3. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original dated June 11, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.