Monday, April 18, 2022

Our spirits were overflowing

‘Yesterday was one of the happiest I have ever passed. It was a yachting party. I love the water, the day was perfect, the people were nice, the race was sufficiently interesting, the lunch was delicious, our spirits were overflowing.’ This is from the vivacious diaries of a teenage Gertrude Vanderbilt. She was an American heiress who would go on to become an important sculptor and art patron. She died  80 years ago today, but a decade or so earlier had founded the now-famous Whitney Museum of American Art.

Vanderbilt was born in 1875 in New York City, into a rich familywith a large house on Fifth Avenue. Her great-grandfather was Cornelius Vanderbilt, a very wealthy railroad and shipping magnate. She was educated by private tutors and at the exclusive Brearley School, spending summers in Newport, Rhode Island, at the family summer home. From an early age she drew and painted, but after her marriage in 1896 to Harry Payne Whitney (with whom she had  three children), she began to pursue sculpture seriously. She studied in New York and in Paris, and began to focus on large-scale public works. 

Whitney’s first public commission was Aspiration, a life-size male nude in plaster, which appeared outside the New York State Building in 1901. Although initially she produced work under an assumed name, by 1907 she had opened a studio in Greenwich Village, and the following year she won her first prize, for a sculpture entitled Pan. Paganisme Immortel was shown at the 1910 National Academy of Design, Spanish Peasant was accepted at the Paris Salon in 1911, and Aztec Fountain was awarded a bronze medal in 1915 at the San Francisco Exhibition. She opened her first solo show in New York City in 1916. In parallel with her artistic career, she also became a major patron of the arts, promoting the advancement of women in the arts, and organising exhibitions for promising artists. As early as 1914, she had organised her first charity exhibition, the 50-50 Art Sale.

During the First World War, Whitney dedicated a great deal of her time and money to various relief efforts, establishing and maintaining a fully operational hospital for wounded soldiers in Juilly, outside Paris. While there, she made drawings of the soldiers and these evolved into plans for her post-war memorials in New York City. She also completed a series of smaller pieces realistically depicting soldiers in wartime. These smaller works were not seen as particularly significant during her lifetime, only  recently have critics rated them more highly. During the 1920s her works received  critical acclaim both in Europe and the US, particularly her monumental works. Her major and lasting accomplishment, though, was the founding, with her husband, of the Whitney Museum for American Art in 1930. She died on 18 April 1942.  See Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica or the New Netherland Institute for further information.

Whitney kept diaries and journals of varying kinds throughout her life. These and most of her other papers have been full digitised in the Archives of American Art. The website provides this summary of the diaries : ‘[Whitney’s] personal journals range from ones she kept as a child and adolescent to ones she kept during her engagement and honeymoon to ones she kept as an adult, and include travel journals, impression books, diaries, confessions album, writing journals, and “A Line A Day” books. Personal journals record Whitney's trips abroad and time spent in Newport as a young girl, her impressions of people, her experiences with friends, her honeymoon trip to Japan, certain early writing efforts, her “thoughts relating to art, subjects for statues, composition symbols, all manner of substances which affects [her] artistic life” (from Art Journal, 1906-1907), her work with the Juilly Hospital in France during the First World War, trips to Spain in 1920 and 1928-1929, and daily events and impressions for certain periods of time.’

Here are a few extracts from her 1894-1895 diary as transcribed by volunteers.

3 August 1894.
‘Last night I dined out. After dinner Mr. Porchon talked to me. It was not quite as nice as on the piazza the surroundings were not as “agreeable, but we got on very well, laughed a lot and enjoyed ourselves generally, that is I enjoyed myself. I don’t know if he enjoyed it. I think we are getting to be very good friends. He is always impressing it on my mind that he is so old and so experienced that I have a wild desire to ask his advice in some imaginary conditions. For instance when I am alone with him the next time I will very seriously tell him that at last his plan has succeeded. He has impressed upon my mind that his grey hairs make him a fit confident for so young and inexperienced a child as myself. Will he listen to what I have to say? Yes, well then he realized that there are things one does not even like to ask ones parents, an old family friends, grey haired and care worn is just the person to apply to’

11 August 1894.
‘Yesterday was one of the happiest I have ever passed. It was a yachting party. I love the water, the day was perfect, the people were nice, the race was sufficiently interesting, the lunch was delicious, our spirits were overflowing.

We met down at the landing at 9.45. There were lots of parties given so of course a great crowd was there. Different people came up and talked and suddenly looking up who should I see in front of me but Regi Renalds. We shook hands said “howd’y do” and that was all. He did not go on the Nournahae, that was the only cloud in my sky all day. It began by being a pretty big one but dwindled down surprisingly as the day went on. To-night I dine at the Cushings Oh Joy! joy! A thousand times joy. Prepare.’

25 August 1894
‘The last week has been such a busy one that I have had to neglect you shamefully. Adele & Emily Sloane who came on the 15th left yesterday. While they were here there was always something to do and the time went by before I knew it. One amusement followed another, but what has given me most pleasure is that I feel I have gotten to know a good many people better than ever before. In the first place I know the Sloane’s themselves better, and it has done me an enormous amount of good. Then I feel now as if I were really getting on with Bobbie Sands. We have had one walk together when we talked of something besides balls etc. and if we are alone again together I am sure we will go still farther. To-night we may have a chance. I do hope so. I am dining on the Electra and so is he. I wish we would “sit” outside it would be what I most want. I would talk of himself, or rather make him talk of himself.

9 September 1894
‘Such rubbish as I have been writing! Such sentimental bosh. To-night for a little I want to think serious by about the future. If I live the chances are there will be some one who will love me only for myself. Of course I will have a good many opportunities of marrying in the next few years. A big heiress! And all that sort of think. I hope it will not effect me. I hope it will not change me for the worse but rather improve me. If I should marry people will say: “Oh for her money”. I don’t care what people say, if it is not true, but suppose it is true? What then? This will be terribly unhappy. The chances are ten to one, I would be married for my money, therefore why marry? How can you discuss it so in cold blood. Suppose you fall in love. What then? I will not fall in love except with the right man. But the right man, who is he? A rich man, a very rich man. But the rich man will he love me? Ten to one - no. What then? Why even if he were rich he would marry you to be richer. No, no, there are true, honest, good men who would not care about the money. But they would not care about me either. You will come to nothing this way, you will not get deeper and deeper. Leave it all to God, he knows what is right & best and good for you. Trust in him and all will be well. Amen.’

17 November 1894
‘When I last wrote I was not feeling at all well. On Saturday I was quite sure I was going to have typhoid fever. I had a miserable pain which had gone on getting worse for several days and was feeling altogether horribly. Sunday I still kept up but as I had not eaten a single thing (without exaggeration) and had consumed glasses of water since Thursday, Mama noticed it and asked me if I was not well. The end of it was the next morning the doctor came and said he thought I had jaundice. And as it proved to be, I was yellow and the pain kept on, and there were the other symptoms. Saturday for the first time I was allowed to get up for a little. That is today, but I have not yet been out of my room. We are going away on Tuesday if I am able, to see Alfred first and then to go to New York. It will be nice getting back for some reasons, but I am very sorry the autumn is over. If I had only not been sick this week Mo & I might have had some of the most delightful rides and walks. I am terribly disappointed about it as I was looking forward to the last week here. Mo has been so nice lately. That is he was especially nice the last time I saw him, the 8th. He was going away till Tuesday & he would have given anything to get out of it. He said how hard it was to go, not as Mo usually says things. Anyway he never says things unless he means them. And he acted as if it were really hard. Of course I said I was awfully sorry and wish he could stay etc, but at last he did say “good bye” after a very nice long talk and off he went. Saturday I received from New York a beautiful box of flowers from him, an enormous bunch of violets just like some I had seen when he was there and that Mr Stewart had sent me a few days before. He wrote in a card he wished he were in Newport & hoped I would wear the flowers, which of course I did. We had planned to ride on Tuesday but of course I could not, so I wrote & thanked him for the flowers and on Wednesday, no Thursday he sent me some more flowers and a letter. Friday he came to see me but I was still in bed. I hope today, oh I do hope I can see him.’

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