MOTHERHOOD, MEMORIALS, AND ANTI-MILITARISM Bashka Paeff’s Sacrifices of War By Jennifer Wingate mages of mothers occupied a prominent place in the visual culture of the First World War. The patriotic mother stood by stoically while her sons marched off to war, and in depictions Iranging from memorial sculptures to sheet music cover illustrations, the bereaved mother mourned the country’s fallen heroes. By contrast, the fiercely protective mother, sheltering her young from the ravages of battle, or physically interceding on her children’s behalf, rarely appeared in the popular imagery of World War I in the United States. Her presence was limited to images distributed by peace organizations and reproduced in radical publications. Both maternalist wartime definitions of women’s citizenship and the anti-radical culture of the 1920s ensured the unpopularity of such imagery in mainstream venues, especially in the 1 conservative arena of public commemorative art. It is in this context that Bashka Paeff’s sculpture for Maine’s World War I memorial in Kittery, Fig. 1. Bashka Paeff, The Maine Sailors and Soldiers Memorial (Kittery) (dedicated 1926). Sacrifices of War (1924-26; Fig. 1), must be 2 Approximately 160" x 204". Photograph, Jennifer Wingate. considered and appreciated. Paeff’s sculpture for Maine’s Sailors and Soldiers Memorial stands out in the context of World War I themes in the teens and twenties. She also successfully memorial imagery particularly because of its depiction of navigated the challenges of public sculpture commissions to motherhood. While there were precedents for her design in the realize three of her war pieces on a monumental scale, graphic art and studio sculpture of the early twentieth century, including the earlier Chaplains’ Memorial (1922) in Boston, this striking anti-war statement would never have been realized and the later Lexington Minute Man Marker (1948) in as a public monument if not for the fortuitous collaboration Lexington, Massachusetts. Even though women had long between two individuals with compatible attitudes toward the participated in commemorative activities and memorial commemoration of war. Paeff’s sculpture for Kittery expressed committees in the United States, women sculptors had only her firmly held opinion that war memorials should not glorify recently begun to gain acceptance in the male dominated field war, a view shared by the governor of Maine, Percival Baxter, of military sculpture. Their contributions to the field were 3 who initiated and oversaw the commission. Rather than remarkably diverse, considering the pressures involved in celebrating the more conventional notions of patriotic public commemorative projects. Memorials by Paeff, Gertrude motherhood promoted in popular media, Paeff’s design echoed Vanderbilt Whitney (1875-1942), Anna Coleman Ladd ( 1878- the position of Jane Addams and the Woman’s Peace Party, 1939 ), and Sally James Farnham (1869-1943) reflected in which held that women, as mothers, had a special responsibility different ways the personal war experiences and professional 4 5 and authority as advocates of peace. ambitions of their makers. Bashka Paeff (1893-1979) was one of several American After studying with Bela Pratt at the School of the Museum women sculptors who exhibited work dealing with war of Fine Arts, in 1916 Paeff became a member of the Guild of FALL / WINTER 2008 31 the Mother Bickerdyke Memorial commemo- rating a Civil War nurse. Those projects served as important precedents for World War I memorials realized in the 1920s by Paeff, Whitney, Ladd, Farnham, Nancy Coonsman Hahn (1887-1976), and others. While Paeff’s achievements were part of a larger trend, in other ways the Russian-born Paeff stood apart from many of the successful women sculptors of the period. A few “rags to riches” stories can be found among the biographies of Paeff’s peers, but several prominent sculptors of the day, like Whitney, Ladd, and Anna Hyatt Huntington (1876- 10 1973) shared a distinct advantage. They not only enjoyed the financial comfort that facilitated access to art instruction and travel, but also had the financial means to enable them to undertake poorly compensated and time consuming public commissions. The Fig. 2. Bashka Paeff, The Maine Sailors and Soldiers Memorial (Kittery) (dedicated 1926), strong nativist sentiment that still permeated Sacrifices of War, bronze relief, c. 102” x 132”. Photo: Jennifer Wingate. the art world in the 1920s, moreover, nurtured skepticism toward immigrant artists. That Paeff was neither wealthy nor of Boston Artists. Founded in 1914, the Guild’s mission was to Anglo-Saxon “native stock” was commented on with regularity promote Boston artists, many of whom, like Paeff, trained at the in reviews of her work, contributing an air of novelty to Museum School and persisted in working in naturalistic rather newspaper coverage of her career. Her parents immigrated to than modernist styles well into the interwar period. Nearly 40 the United States from Russia when Bashka was a year old. percent of the Guild’s founding members were women, who, They settled in the North End of Boston, where Paeff attended like Paeff, benefited from regular solo exhibitions and generous the Girls’ High School and, upon graduating in 1907, the 6 press coverage of Guild events. Paeff is best known today for Massachusetts Normal Art School, where she trained to be a 11 her lighthearted Boy and Bird Fountain (1934) in the Boston drawing instructor. Her artistic proclivity was supported by Public Garden, and perhaps less so for her portrait busts and her parents, who also encouraged Paeff’s sisters in their other works in museum collections. musical pursuits. As one Boston Globe article observed, “art The number of professionally active women sculptors had appreciation, repressed in Russia, was intensified…when Mr. risen considerably since the previous century, even though and Mrs. Paeff moved to America” and where they 12 success in the field remained closely allied with masculine enthusiastically supported the artistic talents of their children. 7 strength and virility. As the After her modeling teacher at the Normal School, Cyrus writer Ada Rainey remarked Dallin, encouraged Paeff to focus her studies on sculpture, she 13 in Century Magazine in 1917, enrolled in 1911 at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. “Sculpture has never been According to one newspaper account, she won more awards 14 thought a medium particu- for her work in her first three years than any other student. To larly feminine, that so many support herself, she worked as a subway token taker, often women should recently have modeling clay in her spare moments, which earned her the 15 chosen it for their own is sig- moniker the “subway sculptress.” As late as 1921, in a Guild 8 nificant.” The changes that of Boston Artists exhibition review, one of her most vocal Rainey heralded , however, advocates, art critic Anthony J. Philpott, remembered Paeff’s did not happen overnight. “early struggles for an art education in this city,” and Numerous women sculptors expressed his admiration for the versatility of her work and 9 16 had paved the way. In the the high quality of her modeling. field of commemorative mili- For the Boston mainstream press and its readership, Bessie tary sculpture, for example, Paeff (as she was known as a young woman) embodied the in 1906 Theodora Alice progressivist ideals of assimilation and productivity. After Fig. 3. Alonzo Earl Foringer, The Ruggles Kitson (1871-1932) enumerating a list of her works at her 1923 Guild exhibition, Greatest Mother in the World had produced the successful Frederick William Coburn, the art critic for the Boston Herald, (1917). Library of Congress Prints Spanish American War praised her ambition and output as an American expression of and Photographs Division. Memorial (The Hiker) and her innate Eastern European artistic temperament. A young WOMAN’S ART JOURNAL Russian Jewish woman sculptor was a curiosity to the art critics. Paeff’s background and the attention it drew also serve to highlight the professional risks that she took with her Sacrifices of War memorial for Maine, easily her most controversial project. Especially in the immediate aftermath of World War I, overt displays of pacifist sentiment were often viewed as politically dangerous and un-American. In 1926, when Paeff’s memorial was dedicated, critics of women’s reform continued to link women’s organizations and peace activities to the threat of 17 Bolshevism. Contemporary reviewers, however, regarded Paeff more as an example of an immigrant success story than as someone who 18 might be harboring dangerous radical views. As art historian Erica Hirshler has noted in her study of women artists in Boston, Paeff “was just the sort of woman at whom social improvement programs…had been aimed.” Hirshler contrasts Paeff’s ability to “inject herself into the midst” of Boston’s artistic community with Fig. 4. Bashka Paeff, sketch for Sacrifices of War (orig. Horrors of War) that of the African-American artist Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller (1924), clay, dimensions unknown (smaller than life-size). Courtesy the (1877-1968), who “remained on the outskirts” of that Ralph Owen Brewster Papers, George J. Mitchell Department of Special 19 community. Paeff’s acceptance in Boston’s art circles and Collections and Archives, Bowdoin College Library, Brunswick, Maine. positive press, together with Governor Baxter’s stated preference for a monument with a pacifist message, gave her the confidence 20 she needed to submit her bold design for the Maine memorial. embodied in the most popular memorials to the First World While relishing the opportunities of her blossoming career as a War. Paeff’s Maine Sailors and Soldiers Memorial, in particular, sculptor, Paeff still faced the problem of making a livelihood with went the furthest toward subverting conventional notions of her art, and she accepted some commissions that her male peers memorial art by critiquing the equation of women’s wartime 21 would have considered beneath their professional standards.