Annetta Johnson St. Gaudens’s Portrait Group of Dr. Aurelia Henry Reinhardt and Her Sons
Priscilla Schwarz, Ph.D.
In the Mills College Art Museum is a small terra cotta sculpture of Aurelia Henry Reinhardt — the college’s sixth president — and her two sons, a gift to the museum from Dr. Reinhardt in 1929. The group portrait was made by Annetta Johnson St. Gaudens (1869–1943). The highly accomplished Reinhardt received a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1905, served as president of Mills College from 1916–1943, was a leader in academic and political associations, and so esteemed that she received honorary degrees from six colleges and universities. Yet the image Johnson St. Gaudens chose to portray was not Dr. Reinhart as the extroverted scholar, but Dr. Reinhardt as the loving mother. The seated Reinhardt has her right arm wrapped round her elder son George Frederick (b. 1911) and baby Paul Henry (b. Dec. 1913), who appears to be a toddler, dating the portrait to around 1915. Reinhardt, who looks outward, appears notably small in stature, her head only slightly higher than George’s. The portrait’s lack of proportional accuracy is compensated by the intimacy of the grouping. If sculpted from life, the piece would have been made the year following Reinhardt’s husband’s sudden death in 1914, making the little tight-knit group all the more poignant.
Born outside Columbus, Ohio, Annetta Johnson St. Gaudens (“Nettie”) trained in the Beaux-Arts/Naturalist style of the great American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens in New York City from 1892–1894. She became one of his first female assistants, worked in his New York City studio, and periodically returned to Ohio. In 1898, she married Augustus’s brother Louis (who altered the spelling of his name to remove the “sacred” connotation) and assisted him with his highly successful large scale figural sculptures for the New York City Customs House and Washington, D.C.’s Union Station. By 1900, their son Paul was born; he would later become a ceramicist. Their home and studio were in Cornish, NH, where Augustus had established an artists’ colony. After Louis died in 1913, Nettie devoted herself to making small-scale works in plaster and terra cotta: portrait busts and medallions, nudes, animals, genre figures, and so forth. She would often spend her winters in Claremont, CA, where her Johnson family moved in 1905. As a socialist and feminist, Nettie probably befriended Reinhardt in California through the various progressive women’s organizations to which they belonged. [i]
Writing to Reinhardt in May 1920, Nettie offered her the group portrait: “there was a fragment of the original terra cotta portrait of you and the boys. The heads are OK, so I filled in the absent portions with plaster and the group is quite effective — Would you like it?” She further wrote: “You seem well known and popular in this place, as well as others — and several folks have liked the portrait”, presumably giving relevance to the little portrait owing to Reinhardt’s growing renown.[ii] One week later Reinhardt happily accepted the piece.
In June 1926, the Los Angeles Times reported that Nettie, while earlier wintering in California, did several “miniature portrait statuettes,” among them one of Dr. Reinhardt with her two children, “revealing at once the professor […] and the successful mother.”[iii] Apparently, Nettie had yet to give the figure to Reinhardt. By Feb. 1927, Nettie wrote to Reinhardt that the “copy I have of the group of you and your sons is being exhibited in Phila. and New York this winter.” Again, she mentions mending the broken heads and offers it to Reinhardt for $20 (equivalent to about $278 today). A year later, in Jan. 1928, the copy had still not been sent owing to the east coast exhibitions and hope for the same in Southern California. Nettie now inquired if “you ever take small collections of small sculptures” to exhibit and if at least one way transportation would be paid. Reinhardt responded that day with an acceptance. Within four days, Roi Partridge, the printmaking professor who ran the woefully understaffed Art Museum, wrote to Reinhardt, alarmed by the potential expenses involved in shipping and securing such an exhibit. Though he deferred to the president’s wishes, he questioned the sculptures’ merits: “I know nothing about Miss St. Gauden’s [sic] sculptures, do you? […] Would a collection of her things be of interest meriting the expense and trouble?”, and already prepared a rejection letter to Nettie. Reinhardt, ten days later, had to defer to Partridge’s recommendations: “Like most educational institutions, we are poor business folk in that we have very little with which to operate our gallery.” She welcomed the exhibit at some other time and offered to buy the portrait when Nettie was ready.
With the portrait scheduled to be exhibited in San Diego by April, Nettie, in March 1927, wrote to Reinhardt that the college would only need to pay shipping one way and then secure the pieces in a glass case or a shelf. The portrait was one of several small works by Nettie, her late husband Louis, and son Paul. All fit inside a barrel and a box (the works were in California while Nettie was alternately in Denver, Cornish, and Claremont). Partridge, two weeks later, again advised against the exhibition to Reinhardt, citing expenses in display, security, and transportation. One also senses he did not like the works: “You may have reasons growing out of your acquaintance with Miss St. Gaudens which lead you to wish that the things might be shown here. […] So far as I know there would be no objection to their type or quality.” Reinhardt prevailed on behalf of her old friend and sent an acceptance by the end of the month. Additional letters were exchanged between the women; Reinhardt allowed the works to have prices listed and the exhibition to run three weeks.
By June 10th, Partridge sent Reinhardt a list of eight eclectic exhibitions recently held in the Art Gallery, noting that Nettie’s group would remain up through the summer. Although Partridge bemoaned the lack of staff and that faculty are doing double-time to maintain the museum’s operations, two weeks later Reinhardt pleasantly informed Nettie that her “exhibit is being very much enjoyed […] and that the statuettes and models are all charmingly placed. The small bits are in a case. The others are on a table.” She asked if the works might stay “somewhat leisurely through the summer” and she enclosed that $20 check for the portrait. Nettie replied, July 1, 1928, that, yes, the exhibit could stay the summer as other gallery plans fell through.[iv] And she thanked her for the check. By July, the Art Gallery’s summer exhibit was noted in The Oakland Tribune by Florence Wieben Lehre, Assistant Director Oakland Art Gallery.[v] Several pieces are listed, including “a portrait of Dr. Aurelia Henry Reinhardt, president of Mills College, and her two sons.” The sculpture found its home.
[i] Nettie was a member of the People’s Council of America for Democracy and Peace, the Women’s Peace Party, and involved in Socialist endeavors (refer to her letters in Rauner Library, Dartmouth College; P. Schwarz ’s article-in-process “Problematic Pacifism: Annetta Johnson St. Gaudens’s WWI Sculptures” will cover this topic). In the May 1920 letter, Nettie tells Reinhardt she regrets missing her presentation in Southern California. Reinhardt had presented on the necessity of ratifying the League of Nations and the Peace Treaty, both of which were being debated after WWI’s end and which Nettie fiercely supported. (Reinhardt’s lecture is cited in The Honolulu Advertiser, Honolulu, HI, April 7, 1920, p. 6).
[ii] Letter dated May 3, 1920, Nettie to Reinhardt, F. W.Olin Library, Mills College. Hereafter, letters quoted in the text are from F. W. Olin Library unless otherwise noted.
[iii] Los Angeles Times, June 27, 1926, p. 74.
[iv] June 23 and July 1, 1928, Mills College Art Museum.
[v] Florence Wieben Lehre, Assistant Director Oakland Art Gallery, “Artists and their Work, The Oakland Tribune, July 15, 1928, p. 31.
About the Author
Priscilla Schwarz, Ph.D., Lecturer in Art History at Oklahoma State University and great niece of Annetta Johnson St. Gaudens, is preparing an article “Problematic Pacifism: Annetta Johnson St. Gaudens’ WWI Sculptures” and a work on Annetta’s life and oeuvre. Schwarz’s research is additionally on Burt W. Johnson (Annetta’s brother). “Burt Johnson’s World War One Memorials — Honoring the Centennial of Armistice Day, Nov. 11, 1918”, a photographic exhibition which will include both sculptors’ works, is scheduled for November at the Fine Arts Gallery in Los Angeles. Contact: priscilla.schwarz@okstate.edu
