Arthur Putnam

Arthur Putnam (September 6, 1873 – May 27, 1930) was an American sculptor and animalier who was recognized for his bronze sculptures of wild animals. Some of his artworks are public monuments. He was a well-known figure, both statewide and nationally, during the time he lived in California. Putnam was regarded as an artistic genius in San Francisco and his life was chronicled in the San Francisco and East Bay newspapers. He won a Gold Medal at the 1915 San Francisco world's fair, officially known as the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, and was responsible for large sculptural works that stand in San Francisco and San Diego. Putnam exhibited at the Armory Show in 1913, and his works were also exhibited in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Paris, and Rome.

Putnam was born on September 6, 1873, in Waveland, Mississippi, whilst his family was traveling. He had an older brother, George, born in New Orleans, and a younger sister, Clara Elizabeth, born in Mississippi. Their father, Oramel Hinkley Putnam (1841–1880), was a civil engineer from Vermont and served in the Union Army during the Civil War. Oramel Putnam was a railroad worker, and the family frequently relocated during the sculptor's early years. The Putnams eventually settled in Omaha, Nebraska, for an extended time whilst Putnam was growing up; Putnam enjoyed drawing animals and modeling them in clay during this period. He experienced a serious accident as a child, falling forty feet out of a tree and receiving a head injury. In San Francisco he visited the California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894, took Julie Heyneman’s drawing class at the local Art Students League, and had a short apprenticeship with the sculptor Rupert Schmid. In 1899 Putnam married his first wife, Grace Choate Storey, in Sacramento, California and moved first to Berkeley, California and then in 1900 to San Francisco. He worked frequently on commissions for architectural sculpture.

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