PETERSEN’S PANTHERS

Lecture for University Museums donors by Dr. Lea Rosson DeLong on April 19, 2012

Christian Petersen Art Museum, University Museums, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa.

When Christian Petersen (1885-1961) moved to the Midwest in November of 1928, he wanted to start a new life; and start a new life, he did. He left his profession as a commercial die cutter, his job, his financial security, and his family behind on the east coast. Within five years, he would have a new family, a new job–as artist-in-residence at Iowa State College)–and a new profession: full time fine art sculptor.

As the first permanent artist-in-residence at an American college, a position he gained through Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal art programs, he began a fine arts program of campus sculpture that established a distinctive legacy. Today, Iowa State University has the largest public art on campus program in the US; from landscape-scale installations to intimate portraits of individuals, Petersen’s art has distinguished Iowa State.

Before he came here, he had a completely different life, although he seemed mostly to want to forget. For many years, hardly anything was known about his career before he came to Iowa, but by the mid-1990s, Lynette Pohlman, director of the Brunnier Art Museum [University Museums], had started the process of reconstructing these years.

Though we don’t have as much information from this period of Petersen’s life as we would like, we’ve always known enough to recognize that he was struggling to establish himself as a sculptor and to be taken seriously as a fine artist. He was a successful designer of small-scale metal objects (such as commemorative medals and coins), but Petersen did not want to remain in that profession–however successful and skilled he was at that. He wanted to be a sculptor on the grand scale, and it appears that he centered his life around that quest.

Though there isn’t a great deal of material in the Petersen Papers in ISU library, there was an old photograph of what we thought must be an important early sculpture: two life-size bronze felines placed atop pillars along a driveway–what we have come to call the Petersen panthers.

They were identified only as being installed around 1920 on “Wildacres,” the estate of Charles Davol, near Davol’s home in Providence, Rhode Island. For a number of years, this is all we knew about them.

For well over a decade, while we actively searched, this old photograph was all we had to go on. We copied it dozens of times and sent or delivered it to any persons or institutions we thought might recognize these sculptures or know something about them. We had many questions, but the most important one was: what happened to these sculptures and where were they now?

Even in this old photograph, it is clear that these sculptures represent a major leap forward for Petersen. Not only are they on a scale that is much larger than anything previous in his career, they deal with a subject and a form that had no known precedents in his work. Nearly everything of his that we know of before these two works was small-scale, usually in relief (not in the round) and was or included some sort of a portrait. Most intriguingly, these pieces have a drama and ferocity that is seldom found in his work from any period.

Over the years, we searched in every way and place we could think of, including making several trips to the Providence area. During our search, we contacted an amateur historian of the area, Tim Cranston, who was an employee of the small city of North Kingstown near where the estate had been. We knew that what had once been a one-thousand-acre estate no longer existed. The land had been incorporated into the Quonset Naval Station during World War II, and no trace of it could be found. Mr. Cranston was on the trail of another sculpture that had been on the grounds of the Davol estate, a massive head of a Narragansett Indian, the tribe which had originally lived in the area. He knew about the Petersen panthers (though he didn’t know that they were by Petersen), but he had no idea where they were. Nevertheless, he, along with scores of others in the area, knew that Iowa State was looking for these sculptures.

Finally, in 2010, after nearly a decade of search, Tim Cranston got a lead, and he found the Indian head. He still had not located the Petersen panthers, but his clue eventually benefited our search. We had begun to worry that they had been melted down for scrap in World War II or had been destroyed (as may have happened to another of Petersen’s early sculptures). He learned that a family had purchased Wildacres and owned it briefly before it was given over to the Navy in the early 1940s; they had taken both the Indian head and the panthers with them when they moved to a family residence in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. As it happened, Mr. Cranston was familiar with the family and, through these contacts, he was able to find the Indian head for which he had been searching, but no one could say what had happened to the panthers. Using Tim Cranston’s clues, we chased the panthers through several owners and auction houses. One collector was a little reluctant at first to discuss these sculptures (collectors are often protective of themselves and other collectors). We kept talking however, and we sent him our publications about Petersen, and soon, he cooperated and provided the information we needed. He did not have the sculptures, but he knew who the next owner had been. We were helped because during his career as an executive, he had made several trips to Iowa State University because of research that was being done here. Apparently, people at Iowa State had been very nice to him, and he had been impressed with their work.

With these final clues, at last we did find them. They had been donated to Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont because the mascot of Middlebury is a panther.

They were on the grounds of the president’s home, and no one had any idea who the sculptor was; they were listed as the work of “anonymous.” Of all the sculptures by Petersen that we have tried to locate, the finding of these works brought us the greatest pleasure and affirmation. Director Pohlman traveled as quickly as she could to Middlebury to confirm in person that these were indeed the long-sought panthers and, to our great joy, they were. After all these years, we knew we had found the panthers.

Unfortunately, the sculptures had suffered from exposure to the elements for over seven decades. The surfaces were scarred and discolored, etched by environmental acids that had perhaps never been cleaned off. Pohlman quickly realized that wherever the panthers ended up, their condition needed to be attended to. They were in desperate need of conservation.

Once we located the Petersen panthers, Pohlman went to work to find a way to acquire them and bring them to Iowa State with the rest of the Christian Petersen collection--and added to our public art on campus collection. Within a year of their re-discovery, the panthers were indeed purchased, un-installed at Middlebury, and on their way to a conservation lab, thanks to the University Museums’ generous and reliable private donors. The long-time conservator for the Museums, Francis Miller of Hamden, Connecticut, brought his familiarity with Petersen’s sculpture to the task of bringing them back to something very close to their original state. For months, he carefully worked over every inch of the bronze, restoring its integrity and eliminating the destructive acids and other accumulations that had congregated on the surfaces. He carried out his conservation in such a way that, with the standard practices of the University Museums, they will never again look anything but pristine.

In addition to the surprise of finally finding our panthers, Pohlman learned something else when she actually laid eyes on the sculptures. Because of their elevated installation, in the old photograph we could not see the entire forms. At ground level, she could see at once that there was an even greater tone of drama about these two sculptures. One of the panthers is snarling because a slain deer is beneath her paw while the second panther growls in competition for this kill.

Both panthers crouch in a fighting position, with muscles tensed and open, teeth-baring mouths lined with sharp, savage fangs. They are acutely aware of one another and react to each other. The photograph we had studied for years did not reveal the deer and, thus, we had no idea of the dramatic situation Petersen had designed.

As we look at the sculptures now, knowing Petersen’s full composition, it is clear that he developed not merely two sculptures of panthers, or even of just snarling, combative animals full of tension and energy. He brought us as viewers into an entire experience that goes far beyond the self-contained forms of the animals themselves. He composed a wilderness drama that takes place without the inclusion of humans, but which we can observe and be thrilled by, through the sculptures. This is not a passive sculptural installation, but a dynamic one that animates the space around it.

The idea of creating a kind of trompe-l’oeil visual event, or a tableau that involves the space of the observer is something that would later become one of the characteristics of Petersen’s sculptural designs. Marriage Ring, for example, where we can sit on the edge of the pond along with the children , or Library Boy and Girl, where we can walk between the two students just as we might in real life , or Conversations, where we can join the three different groups of students who sit on and lean against the wall that we can also sit on or lean against–-all of these interactive installations were ones that characterized Petersen’s later and most highly developed works of art. The Panthers seems to have been the first in which he used this device of expanding the sense of space and blurring the physical boundaries of the art. As nearly as we can tell, these were the first sculptures by Petersen which were large enough to create this dramatic extension of sculptural experience.

Marriage Ring

Library Boy and Girl

Conversations

When the newly conserved sculptures were delivered to Iowa State, Pohlman and the University Museums staff had to decide how to install them on the campus in a way that recognized their significance in Petersen’s development and, at the same time, displayed the full dramatic power of his composition and his visual story-telling prowess.

In 2007, Iowa State University added the Christian Petersen Art Museum, in the renovated historic Morrill Hall at the heart of the campus, to its University Museums. A prominent place on the grounds near the new museum was an obvious choice. Directly across from the entrance was a small nest of a place surrounded by trees and low-growing bushes; it was visually accessible and yet retained a tone of an isolated area in nature where such a wild encounter as the panthers confronting each other might occur. In perhaps the most important aesthetic decision, Pohlman changed the orientation of the sculptures as we had known them from the old photograph. No longer were they installed on pillars well above the sight line of observers, but instead they crouched on shallow rock boulders directly on the ground. We believe that this placement most effectively displayed Petersen’s intentions and enabled a fuller artistic impact for viewers. The panthers now share our own space, the ground on which we stand, as if we were encountering this nerve-jangling drama out in nature. The sense of immediacy and nearly physical involvement on the part of the spectator is in keeping with Petersen’s other large works on campus. When the two animals are seen at more of a ground level, the electricity and antagonism between these two creatures and the animation of the space between and around them is emphasized.

Even after the Petersen panthers were discovered, acquired and brought to campus, the work on these works of art continued. In trying to understand the background for these important early sculptures, we continued to research them and the patron who had commissioned them for his Wildacres estate, Charles J. Davol (1868-1937) of Rhode Island. The Davol family had been in New England since the 1600s, and their fortune was primarily made in the late 19^th century by manufacturing medical instruments and the innovative use of rubber in those instruments. In addition to Davol’s business prowess, he was also known as a sportsman, a hunter, and a yachtsman. His yacht, the Paragon, was well known in wealthy circles of yachtsmen, especially at Newport and New York; he twice circumnavigated the globe. The Paragon was a large enough and substantial enough vessel that, after Davol’s death in 1937, it was incorporated into the United States Navy for service during World War II. His country home was prime real estate of about one thousand acres on the rarified coast of Rhode Island, including about a mile and a half of beachfront on Narragansett Bay.

Davol’s main interest beyond business was sport and, particularly, hunting. Wildacres was established in about 1910 mostly, it seems, as a hunting preserve for Davol and the friends he invited there. In his obituary in the New York Times (April 12, 1937), he was described as a “well known…sportsman and nature lover, both afield and afloat. His…shooting camp at his estate, Wildacres, [is] among the finest in New England.” According to an article about the estate in the Providence Journal of 1921, “the estate takes in a long stretch of natural feeding grounds for all kinds of game. Once it was a part of the chief hunting district of the Narragansetts.” (August 14, 1921) Davol saw to it that his private hunting grounds were well stocked, and he even employed a warden to oversee the game.

By the late decades of the 19^th century and certainly the early 20^th century, there was a growing awareness of the decline in wildlife populations throughout most of the country. Sportsmen and hunters in particular became concerned about the loss of habitat and the over-hunting of game and other species as well. The result was that these hunters were among the early champions of wildlife conservation. If measures were not taken, there would be nothing left to hunt.

The primary activists were not farmers or people who needed to hunt in order to eat, but instead were usually men of wealth and sufficient leisure to hunt for the sport of it. Men such as the most famous hunter and outdoorsman around the turn of the century: Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919).

In addition to his political and military careers, Roosevelt was a popular author of books about his experiences as a hunter, out in the wild places of America. It was Roosevelt’s family who had initiated several early efforts to treat animals humanely and to preserve them from wanton destruction. Theodore Roosevelt outdid them all in the number and range of animals he protected and the amount of land he set aside forever as national parks and preserves. During Roosevelt’s time in office, 230 million acres came under federal protection. Around the same time that Theodore Roosevelt was leading the charge to protect American land and wildlife, Davol was establishing his estate and enjoying his life as a wealthy sportsman. We believe it is likely they knew each other (they were both members of at least one club in New York) and that Davol shared Roosevelt’s admiration for the hunt and the idea of preserving wild places in America. The very name Davol gave to his estate emphasizes his interest in maintaining a refuge away from civilization. Commissioning a giant sculpture of the head of a Narragansett Indian was another indication of his awareness of the loss of wildness.

As a symbol for this wildness that at least historically had characterized America, a common sculpture around the turn of the century was the panther or the cougar. The panther, or cougar, or mountain lion, or puma, or jaguar: an animal known for its stealth, its prowess as a hunter, its utter wildness. It is also known for its avoidance of humans and its normal behavior of keeping to the hidden, wild places as long as possible. They seemed to function in part as a reminder of the drama and the danger of a wilderness that very few Americans encountered. Though rare, occasionally sightings of panthers occurred even in the northeast.

Petersen’s panthers, then, were probably installed at an entrance to the estate as a symbol for Davol’s love of the hunt and his hope to preserve an area where he and his friends could enjoy their sport and maintain some small semblance of the wildness of the American landscape.

What of the fabulously wealthy patron, Charles Davol, who commissioned a near-unknown struggling artist for a pair of panthers to herald the entrance to his estate? No documents related to Davol’s contracts with Petersen have emerged. We still do not know how he knew Petersen or why he chose him to create the Panthers. We do not know what Davol paid Petersen for his work or what the relationship, if any, existed between the artist and the man of privilege for whom he worked. Only seventeen years after the panthers appeared atop the pillar of Wildacres, Davol’s life ended. He died in New York City a few days before he would have reached the age of 69, having taken ill in Florida. His wife, whom he had married in 1914, was from a Fall River, Massachusetts family, and newspaper accounts relate that she flew to New York from Florida to be with him in his last moments. Davol died on April 11, 1937, and on June 4 of that same year, the Providence Journal announced that on April 16, his widow had journeyed to Vermont where she had married one Mr. Merrill Waide, described as an engineer from Miami.

Charles Davol’s will left to his wife an estate of approximately $2.5 million, along with the use of Wildacres, however, the widow apparently had little interest in Wildacres. In 1939, on April 17, the Providence Journal ran a story that, though nearly abandoned, Wildacres was still being kept in tiptop shape. “Two men, a horse, and some wildlife are the only inhabitants of the 1000-acre Wild Acres farm.” It reported that the massive Indian head was still there, as were the “bronze lions,” as Petersen’s Panthers were identified.

The widow having declined the estate, the instructions of the will were followed, and the property was offered to the state of Rhode Island as a public park, but the state had refused, saying that they had enough parks, and they didn’t care to be responsible for the upkeep. The Rhode Island Hospital and Brown University were then, according to the will, offered Wildacres, but both declined.

It is at this point that the fate of Wildacres became muddied and difficult to follow. At some point between 1939 and the early days of World War II when it was acquired by the Navy, a family did purchase Wildacres, and from there, aspects of the property, including the Panthers, were dispersed. Today, searching along the Rhode Island shoreline where Davol’s Wildacres once existed, no trace can be found of his estate.

As discussed at the beginning, Petersen left us few clues about his early career. Beyond the basic quest of re-discovering his Wildacres panthers, we have tried to learn about the times and circumstances in which Petersen would have produced his sculptures. While many of our questions are still not answered satisfactorily, we do know that Petersen valued his bronze panthers, and that they were among the very few works from early in his career that he cited and of which he kept photographs. It suggests that he didn’t want them forgotten and that he did not wish, as their creator, to be “Anonymous.” For decades, through all their travels, the artist of these sculptures was anonymous–he didn’t sign his work–but that is no longer the case.

Though the greatest mystery of Petersen’s panthers has been solved--the location of the panthers themselves--many questions persist. We continue to search and re-search, and more trips back to Rhode Island to study old records would surely bring new information to light. Our experience with Petersen teaches us that though it is difficult to find information about him during the early years of his career, it is there if we only look in the right place. By the 1920s, he was gradually being recognized in the region, and notices about his work and his exhibitions are to be found. Much of the information about him will be found in archives which are not digitized or even indexed, and which can only be searched by sitting for hours in a library. But eventually, we will learn more about the panthers.

Until we do, however, the works of art themselves will have to suffice. At last, they are here at Iowa State University, where they belong, with the Christian Petersen Art Collection, the Christian Petersen Art Museum, and the Christian Petersen legacy.