For quite some time, ‘Elephant Alice’ has lived in Krannert Art Museum’s lower level, where the sculpture’s sensitivity and surprising psychological interiority have long captivated audiences. Perhaps less apparent to us today, the bronze depicts an American celebrity and is an outstanding example of work by a female artist very famous in her day, although now largely forgotten. Sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington was extraordinary.
The daughter of a Harvard and MIT professor of marine biology and paleontology and a scientific illustrator, she was raised in a family that encouraged close observation of animals and the professional ambition of women. She developed an international reputation as a sculptor, despite relatively slender training, owing to exceptional ambition, great talent and brilliance at marketing. She specialized initially in small-scale sculptures of animals, gorgeous bronze casts of highly individualized wild animals.
These figures — almost always in motion — showed a wide range of emotions, from fury to boredom to great tenderness. By placing these works in Boston and New York luxury goods stores, she developed an impressive clientele and eventually found markets both in natural history and art museums, as well as patrons for her monumental public sculptures. Her reputation was tied to her keen study of animals at zoos, farms and animal fairs.
With the press, she cultivated a reputation as daring and sympathetic, saying, “I had a feeling for animal.
