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Frances Grimes

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Name
  
Frances Grimes

Died
  
1963

Education
  
Pratt Institute


Frances Taft Grimes (25 January 1869 – 9 November 1963) was an American sculptor, best remembered for her bas-relief portraits and busts.

Contents

Biography

Grimes was born in Braceville, Ohio, the daughter of two physicians, and grew up in Decatur, Illinois. After attending local schools, she operated a sculpture studio in Decatur for about two years, before moving to Brooklyn, New York City to study at the Pratt Institute. Following graduation, she worked from 1894 to 1900 as the assistant to her former teacher, sculptor Herbert Adams, who called her "the best marble-cutter in America". During the summers, she joined Adams and his wife, Adeline, at the Cornish, New Hampshire art colony. It was there that she met sculptor Augustus Saint Gaudens, who persuaded her to join him as his full-time studio assistant. She worked with him from 1900 to his death in 1907. Grimes stayed on at Saint Gaudens's studio to finish several of his commissions, including the Phillips Brooks Memorial at Trinity Church in Boston, Massachusetts (dedicated 1910); and eight larger-than-life caryatids for the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, which she executed from his sketch models. Grimes recalled her experiences at Cornish in her unpublished "Reminiscences" (Special Collections, Dartmouth College Library).

Following six months in France, Italy and Greece, she moved to New York City in 1908, taking a studio on Macdougal Alley in Greenwich Village. Grimes worked in bronze and marble. She exhibited at the National Sculpture Society, whose 1929 catalog states that her work included "many bas-relief portraits, and busts, especially of children."

Sleepy Hollow panel

Grimes had a major success with her bas-relief panel The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1915). Designed as an overmantel for the lobby of the all-girls Washington Irving High School in New York City, it features three life-sized female seated figures reading Irving's classic story. Critic Adeline Adams saluted the work in the national magazine Art and Progress:

"For me, this relief remains a most satisfying example of modern American sculpture. It delights because of the fitness of the theme and treatment to the purpose specified, the architectural strength of the design, the dignity, delicacy and sureness of the modeling, the harmonious rhythms of the figures and draperies; in short, because of its general state of grace as a modern classic."

Grimes died at age 94 in New York City in November 1963. The following summer, a memorial exhibition of her sculpture was held at Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site in Cornish, New Hampshire.

Selected works

  • Arthur Whiting (bronze, 1907), bas-relief portrait, Music Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Lincoln Center, New York City.
  • Bust of Bishop Henry C. Potter (marble, 1911), Grace Episcopal Church, New York City.
  • Boy with Duck (bronze, 1912), Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio. Other casts are at the Strong Museum in Rochester, New York, and elsewhere.
  • Girl by Pool (bronze, 1913), Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio. A larger version in marble is at Brookgreen Gardens in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina.
  • General Jacob D. Cox Memorial Tablet (bronze, 1915), Administration Building, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio, collaboration with muralist Kenyon Cox.
  • The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (plaster, 1915), bas-relief overmantel, Washington Irving High School, New York City.
  • Girls Singing (marble, 1916), 2 bas-relief panels, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.
  • Charles Otis Whitman Memorial Tablet (1918), Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
  • Mrs. Sarah Elizabeth Pearsons (1919), bas-relief portrait, Decatur Memorial Hospital, Decatur, Illinois.
  • Dr. William Barnes, (1919), bas-relief portrait, Decatur Memorial Hospital, Decatur, Illinois.
  • Bust of Charlotte Cushman (bronze, 1925), Hall of Fame for Great Americans, Bronx, New York City.
  • Bust of Emma Willard (bronze, 1929), Hall of Fame for Great Americans, Bronx, New York City.
  • Chi Omega National Achievement Medal (gold, 1930). Grimes designed the sorority's gold medal – awarded 1930 to 1958 – and was its first recipient.
  • Lt. General Nelson A. Miles Memorial Tablet (1931), Washington National Cathedral, Washington, D.C.

    • Honors and awards

    Grimes was elected a member of the National Sculpture Society in 1912, and a member emeritus in 1961. She was elected an Associate member of the National Academy of Design in 1931, and a full Academician in 1945. She was also a member of National Association of Women Artists and of the American Federation of Arts.

  • Exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts: 1907, 1911-13, 1915-16, 1924, 1933
  • Silver Medal for numismatic design, Panama-Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco, 1915
  • McMillan Sculpture Prize, National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors, 1916
  • National Association Medal of Sculpture, National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors, 1920.
  • Memorial exhibition, Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, Cornish, New Hampshire, July 4 - August 8, 1964

    • References

    Frances Grimes Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA