Christian Petersen: Urban Artist

by Dr. Lea Rosson DeLong

Christian Petersen Art Museum, Morrill Hall, Iowa State University, Ames, IA

April 27, 2007

Christian Petersen is known as an artist of Iowa, of Iowa State and campus life, of the New Deal and Midwestern Regionalism, as well as a gifted portraitist.

He is especially recognized at Iowa State for his Fountain of the Four Seasons in front of the Memorial Union and for The Gentle Doctor, part of a large installation at the Veterinary Medicine College, which has become a symbol of the veterinarian profession. His first work of art for Iowa State was the relief-sculpted mural, the History of Dairying, carried out during the New Deal in the 1930, and about which the University Museums recently published a large study: When Tillage Begins, Other Arts Follow. He is something of a rarity in that he was a Midwestern sculptor in the 1930s who created large-scale sculptural installations. He was not, however, always associated with Iowa and the Midwest but rather with the East Coast.

It may be hard for us to imagine a time when he was not at all well-known or taken seriously as an artist, but in fact, Petersen had a long and frustrating struggle to define himself as an artist and to gain recognition as an artist. It is a gauge of his belief in his own abilities that he persevered through many discouraging years during the early part of the 20^th century.

Petersen was well into middle age before he came to Iowa, devoted his entire life to being a full-time artist, and was recognized as a significant, full time artist. Prior to that time, he lived in New Jersey, Massachusetts, and New York, working as a craftsman. These years of struggle were ones that he put firmly behind him when he came to Iowa State, and it has been difficult to reconstruct that part of his life since he left us few clues. Many aspects remain ill-defined, and we may never have much information about them. After he arrived here, he made few references to his past and left us few documents and even fewer works of art or locations of works of art. What documents we do have preserved are largely due to his second wife, Charlotte Garvey Petersen. However, over several decades, the University Museums has been able to reconstruct aspects of his early years and to find examples of his art from that time.

Petersen was born in Denmark on a farm that had been in the family for generations. In 1864, a momentous battle had been fought nearby which resulted in the domination of that section (Schleswig) of Denmark by what was then called Prussia (Germany). Fearing that their sons would be drafted into the Prussian military, the Petersen’s sold the ancestral farm and emigrated from Denmark, arriving at Ellis Island in 1894 when young Christian was nine.

Petersen grew up in the east, on Long Island and Newark, New Jersey where he attended the local public schools, including the Fawcett School of Industrial Arts. There he learned the exacting craft of die-cutting. Used in commercial and industrial manufacturing, die-cutting involved the carving of an image into steel or some other metal from which a mold was made and then multiple casts made. By 1910, he had already embarked on this career, working for the Attleboro, Massachusetts medal and jewelry manufacturer, the Robbins Co (which still exists; they are noted for the medals they have struck for the Apollo space missions).

This small medal, Athena, is typical of the sort of thing that Petersen was trained to do and did do for the first twenty years of his career.

The carving is very precise and detailed, usually on a very small scale. The style is an academic one that is based on classical art and often uses subject matter from that time such as the Greek goddess of wisdom, Athena.

Though this roundel called Nikh-Eiphnh by Augustus Saint-Gaudens is a plaster cast and not cast in metal, it still is typical of the style which Petersen had been taught and which he employed in his work.

After only a few years in his profession, Petersen’s ambition and restlessness appeared and flourished when he began taking a class at the Art Students League (ASL) in New York. He had married in 1908 and was the father of a child, but he still pursued the development of his art by taking art classes, separate from his work in the jewelry manufacturing business. He may have been encouraged by a friend from Attleboro, George Nerney, who also had artistic ambitions.

The class he took at the ASL was taught by a renowned anatomist and draughtsman, George Bridgman and was a class called the “Antique” class in which the students drew from plaster casts of classical sculpture and generally learned how to draw the human body. Petersen was trying to move beyond his commercial work both in specific skills and in the sophistication of his mind. He also took several classes at the Rhode Island School of Design, in Providence, about half an hour away from Attleboro.

Petersen was well known and highly regarded for his abilities as a die-cutter. He was so in demand as a die-cutter and designer of small metal objects that he was able to establish his own independent studio. This paid the bills but the real spirit that animated that studio was his ambition as a sculptor, not a commercial designer, no matter how highly recognized and regarded. His goal was sculpture.

One of earliest dated works, this relief plaque of Caleb Arnold Slade, shows his attempt to connect to the artistic community.

Around the time of World War I, Petersen began to actively assert himself as an artist. He began showing his work in exhibitions and was able to gain the beginnings of a reputation as a sculptor and to connect with the art community. We do not know exactly how he did this nor do we have much work from this period to study.

Slade was a well-known artist of the region who seems to have appreciated his ability. Slade may have recommended Petersen to certain writers on art; later on in the 1920s, the two artists exhibited together in Attleboro. This relief shows Petersen’s typical approach to relief sculpture and portraiture. It is clearly influenced by the work of the American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, displaying shallow carving with a light, almost flickering, touch in detailing.

Around this time, Petersen did begin to get some independent commissions though some were still for small medals or medallions, such as this World War I commemorative medal. It shows the kind of narrative that Petersen was beginning to develop, and which goes beyond the usual imagery of his jewelry and metal work. It is the kind of “storytelling” in sculpture that he would use when he developed designs for his History of Dairying, the Veterinary Medicine panel, and other sculptural installations at Iowa State. The Petersen’s family’s history plays into this imagery as Petersen symbolizes Presenting Germany symbolically as a rampaging beast who assaults and devours the innocent was a common device in art of World War I, but it also plays into the Petersen family’s history in that it was the fear of German pressure that drove them from Denmark.

The war brought about opportunities for memorials, and Petersen’s first professional commission was of that type.

Janie Flynn Memorial

Near the end of World War I, the influenza epidemic broke out and is estimated to have killed around 20 million people worldwide. Attleboro alone lost around 200 citizens from the flu. Janie Flynn was a nurse for the nearby city of Taunton who lost her own life while caring for the sick. The relief style and the block letters are stylistic characteristics that would endure in Petersen’s art. The sculpture is still located at the Taunton State Hospital.

Petersen was receiving commissions but not nearly on the scale that he wanted. He still faced the frustration of being known primarily not as a sculptor, but as a craftsman, and this sculpture, Newsboys Memorial to Albert Edward Scott may give some insight into his situation.

A picture of this Newsboys Memorial was found in Petersen’s papers and assumed to be by him, though it could not be located. It was thought at first to be in Newark, but there was no trace of it until it was finally located in the Massachusetts town of Brookline.

But Petersen’s role is not clear. He is not the sculptor. The commission for this memorial to a local boy, Albert Edward Scott, a former newsboy who was killed in France, was given to Theo Alice Ruggles Kitson. Her design was based, in fact, on a painting which depicted the discovery of the body of the young (16 years old) Scott. We do not know what Petersen had to do with it nor why he preserved this photograph in his papers. He may have been asked simply to assist in transferring the design into metal. Petersen spent a period in the early 1920s in Boston where he was affiliated with the sculptors Henry Hudson Kitson and his wife, Theo Kitson, and he may have acted in the capacity of a craftsman in the production of the sculpture.

The confusion surrounding his role, if any, may capsulize the situation in which Petersen felt trapped. He may have been called upon to do the craft work of this commission and not asked to do the creative work of designing a memorial to this young hero. He may have despaired of ever rising above his status as a commercial designer -- of being something besides a craftsman rather than a fine artist.

One of his early commissions was this pair of panthers for the Rhode Island estate of a wealthy manufacturer, Charles J. Davol.

They were installed at an entrance to the estate and were referred to in an article of the time about the estate but Petersen’s name wasn’t mentioned.

The estate was broken up in the 1930s and the property was passed to the US Navy during World War II and is now completely gone. What happened to these bronze animals? They are still unlocated. (N.B. The Petersen Panthers were discovered and installed on the Iowa State campus in 2012.) These felines are typical of the kind of garden sculpture that was popular in the early part of the 20th century, and Petersen surely hoped that they would lead to further such commissions, but there is no evidence that they did.

In the meantime, he was producing studio sculptures (few of which can be found today) and portraiture. He was able to place one such portrait in the prestigious annual exhibition of the Pennsylvania of Fine Arts. This and other work may have led to his first major commission for large scale sculpture, his Spanish-American War Memorial, a classical figure that is typical of many war monuments of the early 20th century.

Petersen’s opportunity for this major civic statue may have come more through the foundry hired to cast the sculpture than through Petersen’s reputation as a sculptor.

After having obtained the commission, he worked with the city of Newport to place his sculpture in just the right setting. Several spots around town were rejected by Petersen until he found the right place in Equality Park. His insistence on finding the exact site for his sculpture is a foretaste of his inclination later at Iowa State to produce not just a sculpture but an entire installation that involved landscaping as well, such as his Marriage Ring or Conversations (Oak-Elm Group).

We know of two versions of this portrait of Theodore Roosevelt. One has descended through the family of Petersen and is probably the sculpture as it came from his hands. Another sculpture found by Lynette Pohlman is obviously taken from the same cast but has been given a different finish and sizes are different. Typically, of his work of this period, we do not know when this was done nor the reason for it nor how many were cast.

It may have been cast in relationship to the Spanish-American War Memorial as a smaller commemorative piece presented (or for purchase) by the soldiers who, like Roosevelt, had fought in the Spanish-American War of 1898 (April - August). It is a good example of Petersen’s capacity to capture the personality of certain subjects.

By 1924, Petersen had been working for over a decade to establish himself as a sculptor. He had had some critical notice in regional papers and probably had placed work in exhibitions. We do not know the exact circumstances of this Seabury Memorial, a small plaque that honors members of a New Bedford, Massachusetts whaling family lost at sea. Commissioned by a member of the family, it was intended for placement in the Whaling Museum at New Bedford, where it can still be seen today. Possibly this small sculpture may have led to another, far more significant opportunity for Petersen in New Bedford.

His success with the Seabury Memorial may have led to this commission from the city of New Bedford for a monument to honor the local men of the World War I military unit, an artillery brigade named Battery D.

Battery D was famous for its ferocity and steadfastness in firing their shells to protect the infantry on the front in France. Their ordnance commander recommended only eight firings per minute, but Battery D routinely fired over 35 a minute, creating a bombardment that threatened to melt the gun barrels.

Petersen’s interpretation leaves behind the heroics of earlier war memorials such as his own Spanish-American War Memorial. It suggests a new, modern kind of war. The soldier is caught in the act of loading a shell, his head down so that we do not focus on him as an individual but rather as a kind of worker, carrying out a grim task. Petersen’s work joins other new interpretations of war that came about from the mass slaughter of World War I, with its new mechanical and more impersonal forms of warfare, such as the airplane, automatic weapons, and chemical weapons.

The photograph is a rare one that shows Petersen in his studio, presumably in Attleboro, working on Battery D. He is following traditional sculpture practice by first modeling the nude figure in order to completely understand the disposition of the bones and muscles of the body. Only after that basic knowledge is gained does he add the clothing and other accessories.

This is the first major sculpture in which Petersen establishes a distinctive individual approach. It does not look backward to previous artists and styles but has a new, modern quality. He must have hoped that such an important public sculpture would bring him more such commissions, but he was disappointed. No other similar sculptures were produced.

Instead, he seems to have been forced once more into producing small, commemorative pieces such as this one of the Romanian royal family. The prince and princess as well as the queen, Marie, visited America in a tour that was widely covered by the American press. Again, Petersen’s commission may have come via the Kitsons who had already established a relationship with that family, or it may have come through the commemorative medal industry.

In any case, it was the kind of thing that, for Petersen,--no matter how elevated the subjects--symbolized the almost insurmountable difficulty of shifting from craft to fine art. He had a few exhibitions in the late 1920s, but he seems also to have been struggling financially and artistically. He was simply not making the kind of advances toward a full-time career as a sculptor for which he was so ambitious. Finally, in 1928, he made a break. We do not know what the immediate instigation was, but we do know that by late 1928, he had moved from Attleboro, abandoned his studio, and was in the process of divorcing his wife and surrendering to her all of his financial assets. He moved to Chicago to start over. [Editor’s Note: Since this lecture, more has been discovered. Please see the Christian Petersen Chronology for the latest updates.]

Before he could establish himself in a new career in a new place where no one knew him as an employee of the big jewelry manufacturers, the Great Depression began in 1929. Petersen had a studio in Chicago but obviously the hopes of patronage evaporated in the economic realities of the financial crisis.

Petersen’s sculpture of Jens Jensen may represent an attempt to do a “demonstration piece” that might bring in other work. Jensen, also a Danish immigrant, was a kinsman of the Petersen family. By the late 1920s, he was a famous landscape architect with moneyed clients and a reputation gained partly through his designs for the Chicago parks system. The expression of personality here, Petersen must have hoped, would inspire the commissioning of more portraits, but that did not materialize.

Petersen’s most consistent client remained the same person it had been for much of the 1920s: an Iowan who was curator of the state’s Historical, Memorial and Art Department. Edgar Harlan had been commissioning sculpture from Petersen for several years before the artist moved to the Midwest. He sculpted memorial plaques and similar small monuments for the state of Iowa. Petersen’s portrait of his patron may have been a way of thanking him for his support.

One of Harlan’s accomplishments as curator involved the preservation of the culture of the Meskwaki tribe of Iowa. Early in the Depression when little other work was available to Petersen, Harlan and the Meskwaki tribal leader, Young Bear, traveled to Chicago so that Petersen could model the portrait of the chief.

Harlan also commissioned a portrait of Young Bear’s father, the famous Pushetonequa, who had died in 1919.

In what was one of his most powerful portrait compositions, Petersen depicted not only the features of the tribal leader but also his personal adornments, presenting us with an affecting portrait of the Native American chief.

Matters did not improve as the Depression wore on, either for Petersen or most other American artists. Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, begun in 1933, finally offered hope for artists, and Petersen was eager to participate. At the suggestion of Petersen’s friends in Des Moines, where he had spent considerable time doing portraits of local citizens, he was hired by Grant Wood for the first New Deal art agency, the Public Works of Art Project. When Wood wrote to Petersen in Illinois asking how soon he could be in Iowa City to start work, Petersen said that if he hadn’t had to get a loan for traveling expenses, he would have been there the next day.

The two most important works produced by the PWAP in Iowa came out of Wood’s Iowa City workshop and were designed for Iowa State: the library murals, When Tillage Begins, Other Arts Follow and Petersen’s sculpted mural for the Dairy Industry Building, the History of Dairying

Petersen had already been approached by President Raymond Hughes of Iowa State about creating art for the campus, but after the PWAP was established, he had a surefire way of paying the artist. When the PWAP ended, Petersen’s project was far enough along that Hughes brought him to campus to finish the mural cycle When it was finished, it was successful enough that Hughes was able to install Petersen as the campus sculptor, a position he held until 1955.

Petersen’s struggle to define himself as an artist and to be accepted, recognized, and patronized as such ended. No one at Iowa State in Ames associated him with jewelry manufacturers and small-scale metal objects. He was an artist who had a major, monumental sculpture to his credit and who was ready to create more for the campus.

Petersen never looked back. The frustrations of his east coast experiences were gone, and he could concentrate on his development as an artist. His struggle of over two decades to be an artist led him to Iowa State where he founded a legacy that continues today.