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for Bela Lyon Pratt
1867 - 1917
Pratt began his artistic training when he was sixteen years old at the Yale School of Fine Arts, studying there under John F. Weir and John Henry Niemeyer. In 1887 he entered the Art Students League in New York where he studied with Frank E. Elwell, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Kenyon Cox, and William Merritt Chase. He continued his studies in Paris, entering the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1890 under Chapu and Falgui‚re. Three years later, he began a life-long teaching career at the school of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and is probably best remembered today for his role as a teacher of sculpture.
He gained his first artistic success with two large groups executed in 1893 for the Peristyle at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago. In the years that followed he created a number of portrait reliefs and busts, one of the best known of which is that of Bishop Phillips Brooks (1899) in the Brooks House at Harvard University. Pratt's bronze statue of Edward Everett Hale is in Boston's Public Garden and his life-size Our Lady of Sorrows was executed for the religious shrine at Auriesville, New York. He also did a number of decorative sculptures for the Library of Congress (1895-96) and for the Pan-American Exposition (1901). His last major work was the statue of Alexander Hamilton for Lincoln Park, Chicago.
Beatrice Whitney was evidently one of Pratt's students and, following her marriage in 1915, she and her husband rented a house in North Haven, Maine, from him. Her portrait of Pratt, however, possibly dates to the time of possibly during her apprenticeship with him, that is, around 1910 sh ortly before it was accepted as Pratt's diploma work by the National Academy.
He gained his first artistic success with two large groups executed in 1893 for the Peristyle at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago. In the years that followed he created a number of portrait reliefs and busts, one of the best known of which is that of Bishop Phillips Brooks (1899) in the Brooks House at Harvard University. Pratt's bronze statue of Edward Everett Hale is in Boston's Public Garden and his life-size Our Lady of Sorrows was executed for the religious shrine at Auriesville, New York. He also did a number of decorative sculptures for the Library of Congress (1895-96) and for the Pan-American Exposition (1901). His last major work was the statue of Alexander Hamilton for Lincoln Park, Chicago.
Beatrice Whitney was evidently one of Pratt's students and, following her marriage in 1915, she and her husband rented a house in North Haven, Maine, from him. Her portrait of Pratt, however, possibly dates to the time of possibly during her apprenticeship with him, that is, around 1910 sh ortly before it was accepted as Pratt's diploma work by the National Academy.
