Bessie Potter Vonnoh
| Bessie Potter Vonnoh | |
|---|---|
Portrait of Bessie Potter Vonnoh, by Robert Vonnoh, 1907
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| Born |
Bessie Potter August 17, 1872 St. Louis, Missouri, U.S. |
| Died | March 8, 1955 (aged 82) New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | Sculpture |
| Spouse(s) | Robert Vonnoh (1899–1933, until his death) Edward L. Keyes (1948–1949, until his death) |
| Elected |
National Academy of Design (1921) American Academy of Arts and Letters (1931) |
Bessie Potter Vonnoh (August 17, 1872 – March 8, 1955) was an American sculptor best known for her small bronzes, mostly of domestic scenes, and for her garden fountains.
Bessie Potter was born in St Louis, Missouri, the only child of Ohio natives Alexander and Mary McKenney Potter. Her father died in 1874, in an accident, at age 38. By 1877, she and her mother had joined members of her mother's family in Chicago.
In school she enjoyed clay-modeling class and decided at an early age that she wanted to be a sculptor. In 1886, at age 14, she enrolled in classes at the Art Institute of Chicago. She was able to afford the tuition only because a local sculptor, Lorado Taft, hired her to work as a studio assistant, on Saturdays. From 1890 to 1891 she studied with Taft at the Art Institute, as she completed its sculptor courses.
Vonnoh became one of the so-called "White Rabbits", women artists who assisted Taft on the sculpture program for the Horticultural Building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. She also produced an independent commission, the Personification of Art, for the Illinois State Building of the exposition.
In 1895, she traveled to Europe, and met Auguste Rodin. Her best-known statuette, Young Mother (1896), used fellow "White Rabbit" Margaret Daisy Gerow (Mody) Proctor, wife of sculptor Alexander Phimister Proctor, and their infant son as models. In 1898, she received the commission for a bust of General Samuel W. Crawford for the Smith Memorial Arch in Philadelphia.
In 1899 she married impressionist painter Robert Vonnoh, at his home in Rockland Lake, New York, and honeymooned in Paris. At the 1900 Exposition Universelle, she was awarded a Bronze Medal for Young Mother and for another statuette, Dancing Girl.
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