Fawns Playing (Primary Title)
Anna Hyatt Huntington, American, 1876–1973 (Artist)
As the leading animalier of 20th-century America, Anna Hyatt was a well-known sculptor long before her 1923 marriage to Archer Huntington – railroad heir and son of Arabella Worsham (whose Gilded Age bedroom is featured in a nearby gallery). She trained with sculptor Gutzon Borglum, later of Mount Rushmore fame, and studied in France and Italy. In the 1910s and 1920s, Huntington garnered awards and recognition both in the United States and abroad. Resisting new modernist trends, she maintained a naturalistic approach in her portrayals of wild and domestic animals. In 1934, she completed her first version of Fawns Playing in bronze. Two years later she recast it in aluminum, a favorite medium.
During the 1930s, Huntington and her husband established Brookgreen Gardens in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina – a nature conservancy and America’s first sculpture garden. Shortly thereafter, Archer Huntington founded the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia, which features several of his wife’s monumental outdoor sculptures.
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