1877-1957
Mahonri Young was a grandson of Mormon leader Brigham Young and retained his ties to Utah for his entire life. Brigham Young University, Provo, remains the chief depository of examples of his work including maquettes, sculptures, paintings, and drawings.
Young dabbled in drawing, carving and modeling in his youth, inspired by Cyrus Dallin who had come to Salt Lake City in 1895 to execute a monument to Brigham Young. Mahonri was hired as a sketcher for the Salt Lake Tribune and by 1899 had saved enough money to go to New York where he studied at the Art Students League. In 1901 he went on to Paris and entered the Academie Julian where he studied drawing with Jean Paul Laurens and modeling with Charles Raoul Verlet.
A trip to Italy further prompted Young's interest in sculpture and he began modeling figures of common people, especially laborers. His early admiration for realism and especially for the French practitioner of the aesthetic, Jean-Francoise Millet, became apparent in Young's art at this time. An exhibition of his works at the American Art Association in the winter of 1903Ä1904 brought Young his first critical attention. Examples in this vein--Stevedore (1904) and Man with a Pick (1915)--are in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A later, similar series of small bronze sculptures of single figures, these being of boxers, is represented in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art by Boxer (or Groggy; 1926) and at the Brooklyn Museum by Right to the Jaw (1926).
Young continued his studies at the academies Delecluse and Colarossi before returning to Salt Lake City. There he received a commission for a monument commemorating the legendary 1848 event from Morman history during which sea gulls are said to have devoured pestilent grasshoppers, thereby saving the Morman pioneers from starvation.
After a trip to the American Southwest, Young settled in New York where, in 1912, he had his first oneÄartist show at the Berlin Photographic Company. He became quite active in the New York art world. For example, shortly after his arrival in th east, he helped to organize the Armory Show and, at various times between 1916 and 1943, taught illustration, painting, and sculpture at the Art Students League.
In 1923 and again between 1925 to 1927, he was in Paris where he renewed an earlier friendship with Gertrude and Leo Stein. In 1931, he married a second time (his first wife having died in 1917) to Dorothy Weir, daughter of the president of the National Academy, J. Alden Weir. A series of oneÄartist exhibitions continued throughout the 1930s and 1940s and Young's work appeared in many major exhibitions in this country as well as abroad. His sculpture Knockdown (1927) won first prize at the Olympic Games Exhibition in Los Angeles in 1932, and his figures Industry and Agriculture were shown at the 1939 New York World's Fair. His second major monument in Salt Lake City, This Is the Place, was erected in 1947 to commemorate the centennial of the founding of that city. His statue of his grandfather Brigham Young was unveiled in Statuary Hall in Washington, D.C., in 1950.
Young first exhibited at the National Academy in 1908, showing two small sculptures of laborers and a fullÄlength statue of artist Alfred H. Maurer, done in Paris in 1904. He continued to exhibit at the Academy well into the 1930s and also showed two works in the Five Arts special exhibition there in 1955. He won the Helen Foster Barnett Prize in the winter of 1911 for BovetÄArthur, A Laborer, a figure of an Alsatian boatman, and his bust of artist Emil Carlsen won the Maynard Portrait Prize at the Academy in 1932.
Young dabbled in drawing, carving and modeling in his youth, inspired by Cyrus Dallin who had come to Salt Lake City in 1895 to execute a monument to Brigham Young. Mahonri was hired as a sketcher for the Salt Lake Tribune and by 1899 had saved enough money to go to New York where he studied at the Art Students League. In 1901 he went on to Paris and entered the Academie Julian where he studied drawing with Jean Paul Laurens and modeling with Charles Raoul Verlet.
A trip to Italy further prompted Young's interest in sculpture and he began modeling figures of common people, especially laborers. His early admiration for realism and especially for the French practitioner of the aesthetic, Jean-Francoise Millet, became apparent in Young's art at this time. An exhibition of his works at the American Art Association in the winter of 1903Ä1904 brought Young his first critical attention. Examples in this vein--Stevedore (1904) and Man with a Pick (1915)--are in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A later, similar series of small bronze sculptures of single figures, these being of boxers, is represented in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art by Boxer (or Groggy; 1926) and at the Brooklyn Museum by Right to the Jaw (1926).
Young continued his studies at the academies Delecluse and Colarossi before returning to Salt Lake City. There he received a commission for a monument commemorating the legendary 1848 event from Morman history during which sea gulls are said to have devoured pestilent grasshoppers, thereby saving the Morman pioneers from starvation.
After a trip to the American Southwest, Young settled in New York where, in 1912, he had his first oneÄartist show at the Berlin Photographic Company. He became quite active in the New York art world. For example, shortly after his arrival in th east, he helped to organize the Armory Show and, at various times between 1916 and 1943, taught illustration, painting, and sculpture at the Art Students League.
In 1923 and again between 1925 to 1927, he was in Paris where he renewed an earlier friendship with Gertrude and Leo Stein. In 1931, he married a second time (his first wife having died in 1917) to Dorothy Weir, daughter of the president of the National Academy, J. Alden Weir. A series of oneÄartist exhibitions continued throughout the 1930s and 1940s and Young's work appeared in many major exhibitions in this country as well as abroad. His sculpture Knockdown (1927) won first prize at the Olympic Games Exhibition in Los Angeles in 1932, and his figures Industry and Agriculture were shown at the 1939 New York World's Fair. His second major monument in Salt Lake City, This Is the Place, was erected in 1947 to commemorate the centennial of the founding of that city. His statue of his grandfather Brigham Young was unveiled in Statuary Hall in Washington, D.C., in 1950.
Young first exhibited at the National Academy in 1908, showing two small sculptures of laborers and a fullÄlength statue of artist Alfred H. Maurer, done in Paris in 1904. He continued to exhibit at the Academy well into the 1930s and also showed two works in the Five Arts special exhibition there in 1955. He won the Helen Foster Barnett Prize in the winter of 1911 for BovetÄArthur, A Laborer, a figure of an Alsatian boatman, and his bust of artist Emil Carlsen won the Maynard Portrait Prize at the Academy in 1932.
