Sculptor Charles Adrian Pillars

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CHARLES ADRIAN PILLARS (1870-1937), JACKSONVILLE‟S MOST NOTED SCULPTOR

DIANNE CRUM DAWOOD

A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2011

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would first like to acknowledge my thesis chair, Dr. Melissa Hyde, and committee members, Dr. Eric Segal and Dr. Victoria Rovine, for serving on this project for me. Their suggestions, insightful analysis, encouragement, and confidence in my candidacy for a master‟s in art history were important support. I also enjoyed their friendship and patience during this process. The wordsmithing and editing guidance of Mary McClurkin was a delightful collaboration that culminated in a timely finished paper and a treasured friendship. Assistance from Deanne and Ira in the search of microfilm and microfiche records turned a project of anticipated drudgery into a treasure hunt of exciting finds. I also appreciated the suggestions and continued interest of Dr. Wayne Wood, who assured me that Charles Adrian Pillars‟s story was worthy of serious research that culminated in learning details of his life and career heretofore unknown outside of Pillars‟s family. Interviews with Pillars‟s daughter, Ann Pillars Durham, were engaging time travels recalling her father and his celebrity and the family‟s economic and personal vicissitudes during the Great Depression. She also graciously allowed me to review her personal papers. Wells & Drew, the parent company of which was founded in Jacksonville in 1855, permitted my use of a color image, and The Florida Times-Union granted permission to use some of their photographs in this paper. I would also like to thank the following who contributed to this research: Mona Duggan at the Leland Stanford Junior Museum; Ringling School of Art, Florida Southern University; Emily Lisska, executive director, and Sharon Laird, archivist, at the Jacksonville Historical Society; Jim Anderson at the UNF library; Helen Euston at the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens; Miriam Funchess from the Rotary Club of Jacksonville, and Alice Turner, office manager of the Memorial Park Association. Maintaining the perseverance that led to the completion of this research would not have been possible without the constant support of my beloved family members. Your encouragement has meant so much to me.

TABLE OF CONTENTS page

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... 3

LIST OF FIGURES ...... 6

ABSTRACT ...... 9

CHAPTER

1 INTRODUCTION ...... 11

Challenges of Patronage and Gender ...... 12 Recognition of Pillars as a Significant Regional Artist ...... 13

2 HISTORY OF PILLARS‟S SPIRITUALIZED LIFE MEMORIAL ...... 15

Selecting a Memorial ...... 15 Jacksonville‟s Landmark: The Spiritualized Life Memorial Group ...... 26

3 BIOGRAPHY AND WORKS OF CHARLES ADRIAN PILLARS ...... 35

Pillars Early Career and Works ...... 35 Education and Training ...... 36 World‟s Columbian Exposition of 1893 ...... 38 Chicago, Illinois ...... 39 Jacksonville, Florida ...... 39 St. Augustine, Florida ...... 45 Years of the Great Depression ...... 47 Sarasota, Florida ...... 48

4 CAREER CHALLENGES AND STRATEGIES ...... 68

Nudity in Public Art ...... 68 Patronage Opportunities ...... 73 Pillars‟s Financial Strategies ...... 75 Public Commissions and Competitions ...... 78 Public Assistance for Artists ...... 80 Professional Recognition of Pillars ...... 85

5 CONCLUSION: LIFE RISING TRIUMPHANT FROM THE SWIRL OF CHAOS AND FACING THE FUTURE COURAGEOUSLY ...... 97

Reputation: Recognition, and Renown ...... 98 Jacksonville‟s Most Noted Sculptor, Reclaimed ...... 104

APPENDIX

A PILLARS‟S SURVIVING STUDIO PIECES, C. 1937 ...... 107

B CHARLES ADRIAN PILLARS “OPUS LIST” ...... 110

LIST OF REFERENCES ...... 113

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 125

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure page

1-1 H. & W.B. Drew Company, “You‟ll Enjoy Jacksonville Florida,” c. 1929 ...... 14

2-1 Charles Adrian Pillars, Spiritualized Life, preliminary competition model (now lost), n.d...... 29

2-2 Charles Adrian Pillars, Life Sketch Model, (now lost), 1923, “Exterior height 20 feet.”...... 30

2-3 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, “Jacksonville‟s Memorial to World War Dead,” 1924...... 31

2-4 Charles Adrian Pillars, Spiritualized Life, December 1, 1924...... 32

3-1 U. S. Capitol Statuary Hall, Washington, D.C...... 53

3-2 Floor Plan U. S. Capitol Statuary Hall, Washington, D.C...... 53

3-3 Charles Adrian Pillars, History of Architecture, c. 1884. Doors (three) from the Leland Stanford Junior Museum. Bronze ...... 54

3-4 Daniel Chester French, The Republic, c. 1893, Chicago Exposition of 1893, demolished 1896...... 55

3-5 Daniel Chester French and E. C. Potter, Columbus Quadriga, c. 1893, Chicago Exposition of 1893, demolished 1896...... 56

3-6 Arch Peristyle, c. 1893, World‟s Columbian Exposition of 1893, demolished 1896...... 56

3-7 Miss Jacobi’s School Record, c. 1907-1908. Jacksonville, Florida...... 57

3-8 Teachers. Miss Jacobi’s School Record, c. 1907-1908. Jacksonville, Florida ...... 57

3-9 Miss Jacobi’s School, c. 1907-1908. Charles Adrian Pillars...... 58

3-10 Charles Adrian Pillars, c. 1908 ...... 58

3-11 Charles Adrian Pillars, Twin Sons of Bion Barnett, n.d. Bronze. Location unknown .....59

3-12 Charles Adrian Pillars, Unnamed Portrait Medallions, n.d. Bronze. Location unknown...... 59

3-13 Charles Adrian Pillars, Senator Duncan U. Fletcher, 1909. Bronze. Location unknown ...... 60

3-14 Charles Adrian Pillars, Children of Perry Elwood, 1916. Marble, “Life size.” Location unknown ...... 60

3-15 Charles Adrian Pillars, Cherub Fountain, 1910. Bronze. Klutho Park, Jacksonville, Florida ...... 61

3-16 Charles Adrian Pillars, Dr. John Gorrie, 1914, 7 feet. Marble. US Capitol, Washington, D.C ...... 62

3-17 Charles Adrian Pillars, Gen. Kirby Smith, 1918. Bronze. US Capitol, Washington, D.C...... 62

3-18 Image from Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, 1918...... 63

3-19 Charles Adrian Pillars, The Kiss of Science, 1918. Plasteline model. Location unknown...... 63

3-20 Homwold, c. 1923-1931. “16 May Street, St. Augustine, Florida” ...... 64

3-21 Charles Adrian Pillars, Anderson Memorial Plaque, c. 1920. Bronze. Trinity Episcopal Church, St. Augustine, Florida ...... 64

3-22 Charles Adrian Pillars, Anderson Memorial Flagstaff, c. 1921. Bronze. Anderson Circle, St. Augustine, Florida...... 64

3-23 Charles Adrian Pillars, World War I Memorial Plaque, c. 1923. Bronze. US Post Office, St. Augustine, Florida...... 65

3-24 Charles Adrian Pillars, Spivey Memorial Urn, 1937. Bronze. Florida Southern College, Lakeland, Florida...... 65

3-25 Charles Adrian Pillars, Eagle Mothers: The Fine Arts , 1934...... 66

3-26 Florida National Bank of Jacksonville. “Let This Be The Spirit of 1937.” ...... 67

4-1 Southern Telephone News October 1926, Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph Company, 1926...... 87

4-2 Pat Barwald, “After 5 Years It Is Learned Who Posed for Classic Greek Statue in Memorial Park Here,” 1929 ...... 88

4-3 Pillars Art School information flier, 1909. Jacksonville, Florida ...... 89

4-4 Charles Adrian Pillars, William James Bryan Memorial Tablet, 1911, 5 feet. Bronze, USS Battleship Florida ...... 92

4-5 USS Battleship Florida, c. 1911, demolished 1931. U.S. Navy History ...... 92

4-6 Charles Adrian Pillars, Jean Ribault Monument, May 1, 1924...... 93

4-7 Jacques LeMoyne, Althore showing Laudonniere the marker column installed by Jean Ribault at Fort Caroline, 1564 ...... 94

4-8 Charles Adrian Pillars, Unnamed equestrian model, n.d...... 94

4-9 Charles Adrian Pillars. William B. Barnett, 1931. Bronze. Bank of American Corporate Office, Jacksonville, Florida. (Photo, private collection)...... 95

4-10 Jacksonville Art Institute. The Federal Arts Project, 1935...... 95

4-11 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, “Huge Statue of Neptune To Be Erected on Runway at Beach,” May 30, 1937 ...... 96

5-1 War Memorial Park, Jacksonville, Florida, c. 1940...... 106

A-1 Images of surviving studio models c. 1937 ...... 108

A-2 Unnamed surviving figures c.1937...... 109

Abstract of Thesis Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts

CHARLES ADRIAN PILLARS (1870-1937), JACKSONVILLE‟S MOST NOTED SCULPTOR

By Dianne Crum Dawood

May 2011

Chair: Melissa L. Hyde Major: Art History

Charles Adrian Pillars (1870-1937), a sculptor who practiced his art in an ultra- conservative Southern community at the turn of the twentieth century, was supported throughout his career by both private and public patronage, and much of his work was widely celebrated.

Although he enjoyed recognition throughout the United States, at the end of his life, Pillars suffered from declining health that was exacerbated by poverty. His most enduring work is his bronze Spiritualized Life, an iconic image in Jacksonville, Florida, that was commissioned by a local civic organization at the close of World War I. In this paper, I define the place Pillars occupied in early twentieth century American art, one in which he chose to follow the classical

Beaux Arts style of the 1860s on the cusp of the ascendancy of modernism. I describe the sculptor‟s productive career and the artworks he created, and I expand on the problems of patronage and gender that Pillars negotiated through due to the anxiety of his patrons about nudity, a significant controversy in twentieth century American public art.1 The study‟s conclusion section address three of Pillars‟s professional challenges: establishing his artistic practice as a classically trained sculptor in the conservative South, patronage opportunities

1 Donald M. Reynolds, Masters of American Sculpture: The Figurative Tradition from the American Renaissance to the Millennium. (New York, NY: Abbeville Press, 1993).

available at the turn of the twentieth century, and the reliability of public resources as a stimulus to artistic employment. The conclusion discussion reconciles the loss of recognition that Pillars suffered since the unveiling Life in 1924 and the proposed steps for reclamation of the artist as

Jacksonville‟s “most noted sculptor.”2

2 Dick Bussard, “The Spirit of Youth Stands Tall in Riverside,” Jacksonville Journal, September 30, 1976, 60.

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Southeastern United States was far less accepting of the avant garde than it is today, and writers, musicians, and artists often had to suppress working in a modernist style if they were to enjoy public support. The sculptor Charles

Adrian Pillars lived in the ultra-conservative South, and although he enjoyed the support of the arts community, at times he struggled with the conflicts of satisfying both the mores of time and place and his artistic integrity. American civic commemorative monuments rose in demand after the Civil War.3 Pillars was a sculptor in the Beaux Arts style which, in that great age of public monuments, symbols of human values and the human figure were central to composition and design.4 His most enduring work, Life, is a bronze that still stands in a park in Jacksonville,

Florida (Figure 1-1). The monument was commissioned by a local civic organization at the close of World War I, but its central figure of a nude in the public sculpture was not fully accepted until many years later.

While recognized as a talented sculptor of his day,5 there is no extant biography of Pillars nor a list of his works. Before relocating to North Florida, Pillars had studied with well-known sculptors, Lorado Taft and Daniel Chester French, at the World‟s Columbian Exposition of 1894.

American sculptors of the post-Civil War generation admired the École des Beaux-Arts tradition

(i.e., the works of Daniel Chester French, Lorado Taft, and E. C. Potter) and the sculptural exhibitions at the Columbian Exposition of 1893 showcased America‟s finest sculptors. And while much has been written about America‟s most famous sculptors, art historians do not

3 Michelle C. Bogart, Public Sculpture and the Civic Ideal: New York City 1890-1930. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1989). 2.

4 Donald M. Reynolds, Masters of American Sculpture: The Figurative Tradition from the American Renaissance to the Millennium. (New York, NY: Abbeville Press, 1993), 61.

5 Bill Foley. “River City‟s Short-Lived French Connection,” Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, April 16, 1994.

usually have the benefit of research on their assistants or the American sculptors that succeeded regionally.

Challenges of Patronage and Gender

During the four years he worked on the Life monument, Pillars was challenged by problems from his patronage regarding a nude male for his allegorical conception of the monument. Images from the development stages of his heroic statue of General Edmund Kirby-

Smith (Figure 3-17) confirm his studio procedure was to begin with a nude study in the Classical manner. In fact, he spent weeks searching for the perfect male body with a classic Greek form from which to model the anatomically correct allegorical Life, but he was forced to dash those artistic ambitions to accommodate the requirements of the committee from the Rotary Club that was financing the statue. The compromise resulted in a sexually ambiguous image.

There is, in fact, a long history of anxiety over nudity in American public art.6 In Chapter

4, I argue the issues of nudity in public art which confronted Pillars and his Life monument. I describe the compromise which he negotiated in resolving his conceptual ambitions for the work and the restrictions imposed by the men on the committee.

In Chapter 2, I discuss the nude figure Life, which was certainly controversial and much was made by the neighborhood gentility when it was first unveiled. The prominently displayed nude male torso was derisively called, among other things, “the mosquito on the tomato.”7 Even today, the sculpture is criticized: the “splendid” sculpture [with its strategically covered and androgynous torso] is a “distortion of truth and art,” [because] good art is supposed to be about

6 William H. Gerdts, The Great American Nude, (New York: Praeger, 1974). Michael Kammen, Visual Shock: A History of Art Controversies in American Culture. (New York: Knopf, 2006).

7 Dr. Wayne Wood (historian and author), e-mail message to the author, January 25, 2010.

truth.8 Based on information developed primarily from family documents, in the third chapter I explore the sculptor‟s productive career and the artworks he created. Chapter 4 also includes a discussion of three of Pillars‟s professional challenges: establishing his artistic practice as a classically trained sculptor in the conservative South, patronage opportunities available at the turn of the twentieth century, and the reliability of public resources as a stimulus to artistic employment.

Recognition of Pillars as a Significant Regional Artist

In the concluding fifth chapter, I describe the loss of recognition that Pillars suffered following the unveiling of Life in 1924. Pillars was an important regional artist in North Florida with significant credentials. If the early twentieth century bias of art history to privilege modernism over the Beaux Arts style devalued his work, I argue for efforts to reclaim his contributions to the cultural capital of a North Florida community.

8 Calvin Palmer‟s Weblog, “Prudery in the Park,” http://calvininjax.wordpress.com/2008/07/09/prudery-in-the-park/ (accessed August 15, 2010).

Figure 1-1. H. & W.B. Drew Company, “You‟ll Enjoy Jacksonville Florida,” c. 1929. Private collection. Reprinted with permission of the Wells & Drew Company.

CHAPTER 2 HISTORY OF PILLARS‟S SPIRITUALIZED LIFE MEMORIAL

Selecting a Memorial

World War I had been over less than 24 hours when the Rotary Club of Jacksonville decided on November 12, 1918, to honor Florida‟s war dead.1 The club membership came from the prosperous emerging business class that was growing in Jacksonville. That group would have included in its membership, bankers, realtors, developers, business owners, hotel managers, lawyers, accountants, sales representatives, and managers of the new insurance companies.

To carry out its decision to honor the sacrifice of those who had died in the war, on

December 6, 1918, the Rotary established a Citizens Memorial Committee. As stated on the committee‟s letterhead, the purpose was to erect a memorial to the 768 soldiers, sailors, and

Marines from Florida who lost their lives in service during WWI. The memorial was to be located in the city park on the waterfront at Riverside Avenue and the end of Margaret Street.2

The plan had widespread support, and endorsements came from patriotic groups like the

American Legion, Daughters of the American Revolution, and Daughters of the Confederacy. In addition, it included business/fraternal groups of the Kiwanis, Elks, Masons, Knights of Pythias, and the Chamber of Commerce; social organizations like the Florida Yacht Club; religious groups like the Knights of Columbus; civic organizations such as the Springfield Improvement

Association, and even one trade union.

On January 17, 1919, Rotarian Morgan V. Gress was named general chairman of the 16- member memorial committee. Sub-committees were formed to select the design and site as well

1 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union,, August 14, 1921; George Harmon, “Friends of Memorial Park Seeks [sic] to Restore Area to Original Splendor.” November 1, 1987.

2 From the letterhead of the Citizens Memorial Committee, Inc., Jacksonville, Florida.

as to work on financing the project.3 Gress was in the wholesale lumber business in North

Florida and, besides chairing the Citizens Memorial Committee, was chairman of the executive

committee of Duval County for the Third Liberty Loan in 1918, the Fourth Liberty Loan in

1919,4 the Red Cross drive in 1919, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation in 1922, and the

Community Chest of Jacksonville campaign of 1924.5 As a result of these business relationships,

he was in a position to leverage financial contributions for the effort.

Recognizing that “hardly a family living within the confines of the county has not felt the

effects of the war,” Chairman Gress invited suggestions and donations for a suitable memorial

from “every man, woman, and child” in the community.6 The community responded with many

suggestions: a municipal organ, a marble and bronze statue at the post office property, a boys‟

home building, a riverfront boulevard, a civic auditorium, a playground for children, and an

avenue of trees.7 City Commissioner Chic Acosta even proposed that the park be made a spring

training field for the Brooklyn Dodgers. City Council President John Alsop appointed a

committee to plan a magnificent riverfront boulevard from Riverside to the city limits that would

include a triumphal marble arch with carved rock, a replica of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris that

would dominate the memorial park. Paved walks would lead to the arch from the four corners of

3 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, January 22, 1919.

4 A Liberty Loan was a war bond to support the allied cause in World War I. Public support of subscription campaigns for the four issues of Liberty bonds became a symbol of patriotic duty in the United States. Anonymous, “The Art of Battle for Victory, Buy More Bonds, Fourth Liberty Loan.” USA Today, 138 (2780) (May, 2010). Retrieved March 2, 2011, from ProQuest Education Journals. (Document ID: 2043376661).

5 William Thomas Cash, The Story of Florida. (New York, NY: The American Historical Society, 1938).

6 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, February 1, 1919.

7 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, February 1, 1919; Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, February 11, 1919.

the park. The names of Florida‟s fallen would be inscribed on tablets of brass. Doors inside the arch would open to rooms of war relics and other artifacts.8 It was a grand and costly plan.

Others suggested a mammoth arch with names of the dead on it to be placed at the most conspicuous point in the city so it could be seen by visitors to Jacksonville.9 Capt. Burton Harris, in his letter to Gress in 1919, argued against memorials that would also serve as public improvements such as a building, a boulevard, or a civic auditorium.10 A common point of contention for WWI memorial committees was the choice between a purely symbolic monument and one that was a more utilitarian. Sergiusz Michalski‟s research on war monuments suggested that a memorial of practical benefit to the community might overshadow the main purpose,

“‟memorials‟ …that would be useful is the perfectly adequate reason for rejecting them all. That the purpose of a memorial is to be a memorial,” that is, to be a commemoration of the dead .11

An editorial in The Jacksonville Florida Times-Union cautioned that when a memorial has value for other purposes, it loses its designation and is no longer a memorial.12 For that reason, the committee determined that the memorial was to have no practical value and would be solely a piece of art that honored those who had died in the war.

In February 1920, Pillars submitted a suggestion for the memorial. Recognized as “an eminent authority upon this subject” for his fame as the sculptor of Florida‟s two heroic statues in Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol, Pillars‟s original idea was for a huge flagstaff with

8 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, February 4, 1919; Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, 1921; Bill Foley, April 16, 1994; Bill Foley, “Postwar Good Intentions Went Awry—And Amok,” Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, n.d.

9 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, March 21, 1919; Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, February 4, 1919.

10 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, March 21, 1919.

11 Sergiusz Michalski, Public Monuments: Art in Political Bondage, 1870-1997. (London: Reaktion Books, 1998), 128.

12 Editorial, Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, 1919.

a base of bronze. He noted that the base should be stylistically represented, and the names of the dead should be inscribed upon it. He added, “The national flag which these men died to uphold should be kept flying over the memorial.”13 Pillars mentioned similar memorial flagstaffs in New

York, Massachusetts, and in St. Mark‟s Cathedral in Venice.

At its March 21, 1919, meeting, the Rotary Club recommended the city purchase a block near Five Points bounded by Riverside Avenue, Margaret Street, and the St. Johns River. In turn, the club promised to erect, with the cooperation of citizens of Duval County, a memorial to

Florida‟s soldiers, sailors, and Marines. The club suggested that it be in the form of an arch.14

By June of 1919, Jacksonville City Council had paid $125,000 to buy the six and one half acres that became Memorial Park15 and which were part of the fourteen-acre Riverside Park called the “picnic grounds” that had been set aside by Forbes and Cheney Streets from “the old

Robinson property.”16 The purchase of the land triggered a six-year project to lay out the park, landscape it, build a fence to keep out roaming cattle, and commission the bronze statue to be placed in a pool on the waterfront. The Citizens Committee raised $52,000 for the statue and for developing a contract for landscaping with the prestigious Olmstead Brothers firm.17

Pillars competed with more than 100 other artists to create the memorial and submitted several models during the process. His second proposal was a strictly ornamental design with a

13 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, “Sculptor Pillars Gives Idea,” February 8, 1919.

14 The most popular choice for the committee at the time and also the suggestion of the City Council President, John Also (See Bill Foley, “River City‟s Short-Lived French Connection.” ; Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, April 2, 1919.

15 George Harmon, “Friends of Memorial Park,” November 1, 1987.

16 Bill Foley, “River City‟s Short-Lived French Connection,” n.d. Wayne W. Wood, Jacksonville’s Architectural Heritage: Landmarks for the Future. (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 1989).

17 Olmsted Associates Records, Job No. 5153-5169, Box BB289, Reel 247, #5151, Manuscript Division. (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, n.d.).

central mass that represented an ancient altar to carry out the idea of sacrifice. His plan was for the altar to be surmounted by a bronze tripod 15 feet high composed of three “winged victories” crowned by the inscription “Honor Florida‟s Heroic War Dead. World War.18 R. A. Benjamin, of the local firm of Greeley & Benjamin, submitted watercolor sketches of a plan for the entire park and memorial. A Mr. Price, of Chicago, represented by Jacksonville‟s Clark Monument

Company, presented two comprehensive designs with models.19

On June 24, 1921, Pillars‟s rough design was approved by the Citizens Memorial

Committee (Figure 2-1).20 His winning design was the depiction of a winged youth, surmounted on a globe and, in the early example, the globe contained “the forces of the earth . . . represented by figures of the senses working in and out of the swirl in an effort to entangle him.”21

Originally, the nude male was so detailed and so well endowed that members of the Rotary Club asked Pillars to alter it slightly.22 Some members of the committee were shocked at the realism of the statue, even while admiring Pillar‟s ability to capture the human figure in bronze.23 In its final form, the statue is androgynous, in his compromise with the committee the male nude is strategically covered with a codpiece, faint suggestion of nipples, and rumored to possess the legs of a woman.24 The finished figure also resembled the stylized young woman popularly used

18 Bill Foley, “Postwar Good Intentions Went Awry.”

19 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, 1921

20 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, February 25, 1921.

21 Jacksonville Metropolis, August 13, 1921, 9.

22 Douglas Filaroski, “Meaningful Pose in Memorial Park Monument Stirs Thoughts,” Jacksonville Florida Times- Union, November 11, 1999; Bill Foley, “The Lost Statues of Jacksonville Beach,” Jacksonville Florida Times- Union, June 11, 1994.

23 Judge May, “City‟s First „Streaker‟ Still At It—Mutely and in Bronze,” Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, March 20, 1974, A-1, 5.

24 The late Thelma Boggs, who ran Riverside‟s most prestigious dance studio, claimed to be the model for the legs of the Memorial Park statue. Dr. Wayne Wood, historian and author, e-mail message to the author January 25, 2010.

as the popular symbol of the Victory Loan drive, a woman with flowing tresses and a loose garment with one arm aloft holding a helmet. Unlike the male figure, females, and children on the Spiritualized Life memorial, that woman was clothed, if not scantily.25

Pillars had to be not only the artist, but had to manage the business affairs of the project as well, including hiring assistants and dealing with the foundry that would do the final casting of the bronze. For Pillars, the process was workable because he knew the system and was respected in the community, and he was constantly commissioned during this time.

Richman observed that a sculptor in Pillars‟s situation could have expected four of five reviews during the process: on signing the contract, on the approval of the scale model, on completing the working or full-scale models, when the carving or casting was completed, and when the state was placed. Artists were expected to pay their assistants and purchase materials and services throughout the process, and the patron or commission representative was encouraged to inspect the progress at the artist‟s studio. As each review stage was reached, payment was dependent upon the client‟s approval.26

In February of 1922, the 54-member all-male monument selection committee went to St.

Augustine for their first inspection of the proposed statue at the Ponce de Leon Studios.”27 After several of them expressed their concern about the statue‟s graphic nudity, Pillars agreed to modify it somewhat.28 The committee was very enthusiastic about the memorial as it stood upon

25 Bill Foley, “River City‟s Short-Lived French Connection,” April 16, 1994.

26 M. T. Richman, “The Early Career of Daniel Chester French, 1869-1891” (PhD diss., University of Delaware, 1974).

27 The Ponce de Leon Hotel in St. Augustine was “the grandest hotel built in the 1880s” and the centerpiece of the development plan of Standard Oil co-founder Henry Flagler to transform the small Spanish Florida town into a winter Newport. To the north of the hotel, Flagler built studios for artists to use to paint for guests in the winter and host receptions in the Grand Parlor to display their work. Gil Wilson, “Dr. Bronson‟s History of St. Augustine,” 2002. http://www.drbronsontours.com/bronsonflaglerartistcolony.html (accessed August 21, 2008).

28 Judge May, “City‟s First „Streaker,‟” March 20, 1974.

inspection (Figure 2-2) and reported that the work of Mr. Pillars had exceeded their expectations.

At the first inspection, Pillars was asked to begin the full-scale model for casting in bronze, and the plan was to unveil it on November 22, 1921.29 In actuality, the monument was three more years in the making.30

On August 30, 1923, Pillars contracted with T. F. McGann & Sons Co. of Boston to cast the “8‟0” diameter sphere surmounted by an 8‟0” figure” with a “French green patina.” Pillars was to furnish the model cut in a proper manner for assembly by Roman joints.”31 The finished model was packed, transported from Pillars‟s Homwald studio in St. Augustine, and shipped to

Boston from the railway station at St. Augustine.32 On the same day, Pillars wrote to Olmsted

Brothers, the landscape architectural firm designing Riverside Memorial Park, to acknowledge their request for notification that the casting had been contracted.33

The dedication ceremonies were held on Christmas Day in 1924 (Figure 2-3) and included an unveiling of the monument by two little girls who were relatives of local citizens who had died in the world war: Mary Danto Bedell was the niece of Miss Bessie Gale, a YMCA worker, who died while on duty near Bordeaux, France, and Mary B. Burroughs, a niece of

Edward Cantey DeSaussure, a member of the 82nd Regiment, 328th Machine Gun Company, who died in the Argonne Forest campaign of France. The names of the 1,200 men and women from

29 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, February 25, 1921.

30 Ann Dye, “Dream of Sculptor Was Statue of Jackson,” Jacksonville Journal, May 31, 1960.

31 Agreement with T. F. McGann & Sons Co. and Charles Adrian Pillars dated August 30, 1923. Copy in Pillars family archive.

32 Enzo Torcoletti, Director of Sculpture Studies, Flagler College, St. Augustine, FL, and principal restorer of Pillars‟s works in North Florida. Discussion with the author, May 13, 2010.

33 C. Adrian Pillars to Olmsted Brothers, Inc., August 30, 1923, St. Augustine, FL, private collection.

Florida34 who perished in the war were written on parchment scrolls in India ink, sealed in lead- lined copper containers, and placed in the cornerstone of the memorial.35 The list was compiled largely from the official government list of those who died in service during the war. The names of the casualties from Duval County were on a separate list.

This repository of the list of the dead provided closure for community and families that were intimately involved; the ceremony interred their names now that the war was over. The list of names does not appear on the surface of the bronze monument as originally planned, but are sealed within the cornerstone, a symbolic acknowledgement of patriotism, not individual patriots.37 Since its unveiling in 1924, the memorial has been the site for commemorative occasions, Veteran‟s Day, Memorial Day, political and art festivals, and religious services. Since

1924, the Spiritualized Life bronze has been a Jacksonville icon (Figure 1-1), with Pillars‟s winged image the city‟s symbol for gatherings of remembrance and celebration—what Eric

Newton described as accepted collective meaning for a community.38

Pillars said Spiritualized Life depicted a young, winged male, forever racing the wind and holding aloft an olive branch of peace.39 Pillars‟s words describing the statue are included on a bronze plaque on one side of the fountain. The inscription reads,

34 Jacksonville, Duval County, Florida had 108 white and 49 black victims of war service. Harry Gardner Cutler, History of Florida Past and Present. Vol. 1. (Chicago, IL: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1923). 184-201

35 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, December 26, 1924.

37 Charles L. Griswold, The Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Washington Mall: Philosophical Thoughts on Political Iconography. In Critical Issues in Public Art: Content, Context, and Controversy, Edited by Harriet F. Senie and Sally Webster. (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 88.

38 Eric Newton, “Art as Communication,” British Journal of Aesthetics 1, no. 2 (Mar 1961), 80. Note: Eric Newton was the Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford University from 1959 until 1960 and is a writer and critic of art.

39 Bill Foley, “”River City‟s Short-Lived French Connection,” April 16, 1994.

“Spiritualized Life—symbolized by the winged figure of youth—rises triumphantly from the swirl of war‟s chaos, which engulfs humanity and faces the future courageously.”40

In the Jacksonville Florida Times-Union narrative of the ceremony, the bronze group

Spiritualized Life was conceived by Pillars to symbolize the idea of life, its struggles, and man‟s hope for victory. Pillars wrote when he began work on the monument in 1920,

I desired this memorial to present the idea of life, its struggle and victory. While striving to make a composition visualizing this, I found a poem by Alan Seeger, a soldier-victim of the war.41 At once, I saw the typical spirit of the boys who went overseas—saw with their eyes a world in the insane grip of greed and ambition, caught in the ceaseless swirl of selfishness, hate and covetousness, ever struggling against submergence. I saw those boys giving up their homes, sweethearts, wives, and mothers, to go overseas and, through the supreme sacrifice, make secure the happiness and safety of their loved ones. With this vivid picture in mind, I constructed a sphere to represent the world, engirdled with masses of swirling water typifying the chaotic earth forces. In this surging mass of waters, I shaped human figures, all striving to rise above this flood—struggling for mere existence. Last, surmounting these swirling waters, with their human freight, I placed the winged figure of Youth, representative of spiritual life, the spirit of these boys which was the spirit of victory. Immortality attained not through death, but deeds; not a victory of brute force, but of spirit. This figure of Youth Sacrificed wears his crown of laurels won. He holds aloft an olive branch, the emblem of peace.42

The nude young man is a hero-cult43 monument. His eyes look straight ahead with confidence, a weight-shifted contrapposto pose with one foot raised and slightly forward. The raised olive branch of peace is lifted with a general impression of a purposive, controlled

40 Interesting to observe that “chaos” was also the theme for the sculpture program of the 1893 World‟s Columbian Exposition where Pillars worked as a sculptural assistant. Reynolds describes the allegorical theme of “chaotic nature harnessed by man and brought into the service of society and the institutions, values, and virtues by which that is accomplished.” In Donald Martin Reynolds, Masters of American Sculpture: The Figurative Tradition from the American Renaissance to the Millennium. (New York: Abbeville Press, 1993), 29.

41 I Have a Rendezvous with Death, 1916.

42 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, May 30, 1950.

43 The hero seen as the representation of idealized virtues which are admired and honored by the community. Orrin E. Klapp, “Hero Worship in America,” American Sociological Review Vol. 14, No. 1 (Feb., 1949): pp. 60. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2086446 (accessed March 3, 2011).

affirmation. The young man looks to the north—downtown Jacksonville—acknowledging the sacrifice of the community and championing the dignity of civic virtue and the struggles to the death over values, and the value of human life and the even greater value of American principles articulated in Pillars‟s interpretation of Spiritualized Life. A bronze orb is characterized in political iconography by Charles Griswold as a heliocentric monument:44 The male figure reaches upward to the sun and heavens and connects the sun with the earth. As a result, Pillars‟s figure is depicted as the heroic transmitter of a higher purpose and loftier ideals. Pillars was deliberate in his determination to capture complete realism in depicting the chaotic human figures of nude women and children lost in the swirling mass of waters, all striving to rise above the flood (Figure 2-4).45 Faithful to the impressions and sentiments of the hundreds of spectators who admired the newly unveiled sculptural piece, subsequent visitors have also acknowledged its significance as public art. In 1928, thirty delegates from the Chicago Association of

Commerce paid tribute to Pillars‟s masterpiece in a telegram to the Jacksonville Florida Times-

Union, “The bronze war memorial of Spiritualized Youth will win national acclaim as one of

America‟s most beautiful and inspiring works of art.”46 Many in the Chicago group viewed the

Spiritualized Life bronze as the most effective piece of outdoor art in America and Jacksonville‟s greatest asset.

Pillars said that he had spent weeks searching for a young man with a classic Greek figure to symbolize the human spirit.47 Percy R. Palethorpe, who later became the St. Johns

44 Harriet F. Senie and Sally Webster, eds. Critical Issues in Public Art (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 77.

45 Pillars also used his wife Ruth and young son Adie and infant daughter Elizabeth as models for the figures on the orb. See Figure 2-4 details.

46 St. Augustine Evening Record, February 22, 1928, 6.

47 Pat Barwald, “After Five Years It Is Learned Who Posed for Classic Greek Statue in Memorial Park Here,” Jacksonville Journal, 1929, Daniel Filaroski, “Meaningful Pose in Memorial,” November 11, 1999.

County Florida tax assessor, worked for two years as a model for Pillars in his St. Augustine studio. Palethorpe posed an average of 15 hours a week after school and on weekends and was paid a dollar an hour from Pillars. Palethorpe said that he was swimming in the city pool when

Pillars approached him about the modeling job. Palethorpe was 16 when he began the work; he was six feet three inches tall, weighed 180 pounds, and was an end on the football team. Two others, Henry McDonald and Walter DeCathilis, also served briefly as models; McDonald, a college football player, posed only for the wax model, and DeCathilis posed while employed as athletic director at the YMCA but had to leave for college midway in the modeling work.48

Palethorpe said the only visitors allowed in the studio were other sculptors and the committee from Jacksonville in charge of erecting the statue. As is often the case with most works of art, there was some disagreement and controversy over the degree of nudity in the proposed monument, and Palethorpe said when those disagreements arose, he retired upstairs and rested on a cot, still earning his dollar an hour. Palethorpe recalled that he was kidded a great deal about the modeling job and although he included a very small copy of image of the winged figure on his business card as tax assessor, he hastened to add, “I wouldn‟t have dared brought it up in my campaign last year.”49

48 Cynthia Parks, “‟Winged Victory:‟ Taking Care of a Riverside Treasure,” Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, January 25, 1988, D1, D6. In Pat Barwald‟s 1929 interview with Pillars, he noted that Pillars took 18 months searching for the perfect model. Pillars said, “I wanted a perfect likeness of a classic Greek body.” “The average American type of athlete would not do . . . he wanted a youth eight heads tall.” The first model for the monument, Walter De Canthilis, who traced his ancestry back to ancient Greece, went away to college. Pillars told Barwald in the newspaper interview that when De Canthilis came back for a few weeks of vacation that Pillars worked “day and night” on the statue. To finish the work, Pillars selected another model “although not up to the standard of De Canthilis,” Percy Reginald Palethorpe, Jr., who was “almost as tall as De Canthilis and was built along just about the same proportions.”

49 Hank Drane, “Jacksonville War Memorial Model Turns Up as St. Johns Tax Assessor,” Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, October 8, 1961, sec 2, 16.

The Citizens Committee, a landscape sub-committee, chaired by Ninah Cummer, selected the prestigious Olmstead Brothers firm to design the Riverside Memorial Park grounds.50 The

Olmsted firm‟s aesthetic theory formulated by their father, who founded the company, was that an urban park should have a close identification between beauty and utility: open ground, plantings, natural scenery, and delightful views effectively elevating the human spirit.51

Adhering to that concept, the landscaped grounds in front of the Spiritualized Life memorial function like a grassy outdoor theater where visitors may observe and meditate. Immediately to the south, the broad St. Johns River frames the rear of the proscenium platform .

Jacksonville’s Landmark: The Spiritualized Life Memorial Group

The Citizens Committee dedicated Memorial Park and the sculpture on Christmas Day

1924, and from that day, it has been the responsibility of the City of Jacksonville and has been maintained by the Parks and Recreation Department of the city. Memorial Park was listed in the

National Register of Historic Places on March 22, 1985, and is recognized as a National Register

Property. On December 9, 1986, the Riverside Memorial Park Association, Inc., a nonprofit agency, was organized to promote the preservation and restoration of the landmark site and assume responsibility for its maintenance and continuity.52 A $60,000 campaign financed with city money and private funds was raised to contract a restoration expert for the statue and to begin replacing vandalized benches, the entrance gates, and to upgrade lighting and repair the

50 An interesting account of networking for Ninah Cummer and the Olmsted firm: Ninah Cummer‟s gardener, Bruiser Lauramore, had been hired away from her landscaping company, Glen St. Mary Nursery, in Glen St. Mary, Florida. Dr. Harold Hume, distinguished horticulturalist, had been president of the company since 1907. Magi Taber (archivist and vice president, Glen St. Mary Nursery). Discussion with the author, May 7, 2010. It was Dr. Hume of the nursery who contacted his friend, Frederick Law Olmsted, and asked him to consult with the Citizens Memorial Committee on his “visit to Florida this winter.” December 12, 1921, letter from Olmsted Brothers to Glen St. Mary Nurseries Company (in Olmsted Associates Records, Job No. 5153-5169, Box BB289, Reel 247, #5151, Manuscript Division, (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, n.d.).

51 William H. Wilson, The City Beautiful Movement. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 17.

52 Alice Turner (manager, Riverside Memorial Park Association) discussion with the author, May 3, 2009.

sprinkler system in the park.53 On Christmas Day 1986, under the direction of the association,

Riverside Memorial Park was lighted for night viewing for the first time in 62 years.54

In 1988, 63 years after the dedication of the statue, the Memorial Park Association and the City of Jacksonville agreed to have the bronze figure inspected by an expert. Phoebe Dent

Weil, chief conservator of The Conservation Group, Washington University Technology

Associates, Inc., in St. Louis, Missouri, conducted a review and analysis of repairs required to restore the bronze monument.55 In Weil‟s opinion, the state was “in quite beautiful condition and ready for a preservation treatment.”56 In her evaluation of the sculpture, Weil noted that after the end of the Beaux Arts period, sculptural style changed drastically:

Aesthetically, I think it‟s an incredibly wonderful, imaginative, evocative piece from right at the tail end of the Beaux Arts era. After that, sculptural style changed drastically. As a student of D. C. French, Pillars was really at the tail end of that tradition so [the Victory] is extremely valuable as an [example of an] era that we no longer have. It evokes French nineteenth-century sculpture, the many echoes of wonderful concepts dramatic, romantic, male sturm [storm, turmoil] and conflict and triumph and wonderful treatment of the nude figure. It‟s a joy to see such a piece.57

By 1924, at the time of the unveiling of the monument, sculptural style had changed drastically: Pillars, as the artist celebrated for the Spiritualized Life monument, was no longer au courant as a Beaux Arts sculptor and he grappled in the balance of his career with the vagaries of

American patronage for art commissions. Chapter 3 is a review of Pillars‟s career beginning with his training and apprenticeship with Daniel Chester French and concluding with a description of

53 George Harmon, “Friends of Memorial Park Seeks To Restore Area to Original Splendor,” November 1, 19887.

54 Grace Hayes, “Association Forms To Preserve Memorial Park: Statue Could Be Focus of Preservation Efforts,” Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, December 10, 1986, 1,19.

55 Access to the Life bronze globe is through a small door disguised in the swirling waters [see Figure 2-4 (g) detail].

56 Cynthia Parks, “„Winged Victory‟: Taking Care of a Riverside Treasure.” January 25, 1988, D-1.

57 Cynthia Parks, “„Winged Victory,‟ January 25, 1988, D-6.

his sculptural contributions to the private and public art in Florida. Chapter 4 is a discussion of the challenges faced by Pillars in the continuation of his career on the cusp of stylistic preference changes and the withering of art commissions and fiscal resources for artists and their patrons during the Great Depression.

Figure 2-1. Charles Adrian Pillars, Spiritualized Life, preliminary competition model (now lost), n.d. (Photo, private collection).

Figure 2-2. Charles Adrian Pillars, Life Sketch Model, (now lost), 1923, “Exterior height 20 feet.” (Photo, private collection).

Figure 2-3. Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, “Jacksonville‟s Memorial to World War Dead,” 1924. (Image in public domain). Reprinted with permission of Jacksonville Florida Times-Union.

Figure 2-4. Charles Adrian Pillars, Spiritualized Life, December 1, 1924. Bronze, Jacksonville, Florida. Façade detail: A) north, B) east; C) south, D) southwest, E) southwest detail, F) west, G) access door. (Photos, Dianne Crum Dawood).

A B

C D

Figure 2-4. Continued

E F

Figure 2-4 Continued

CHAPTER 3 BIOGRAPHY AND WORKS OF CHARLES ADRIAN PILLARS

Pillars Early Career and Works

Charles Adrian Pillars is Jacksonville‟s “most noted sculptor.”1 By the time of his selection to create the publically commissioned bronze memorial Spiritualized Life, the centerpiece of

Riverside Memorial Park, he had created both statues representing Florida in the Hall of Fame in

Statuary Hall of the Capitol in Washington, DC (Figure 3-1) (Figure 3-2). In open competition,

Pillars won $10,000 each for the life-size statues of Dr. John Gorrie, the West Florida physician who invented the first artificial ice machine to care for his feverish patients,2 and Col. Edmund

Kirby-Smith, the famous Confederate general and native of St. Augustine.3 In newspaper clippings from his family‟s collection, praise for Pillars was effusive. In a 1910 article,

As evidence that Jacksonville is growing intellectually and aesthetically, as well as materially and commercially, it is noted that in matters of music and art there is active interest. It is only natural that the material things, business and politics, should advance ahead of every other proposition, and when the people demand that their homes shall be attractive, as well as comfortable, and are willing to give attention to the fine arts, it is growth. The demand for the artistic has come to be realized and Mr. C. Adrian Pillars, for some years past teaching art in this city, and having come here from the West with the highest recommendations, now finds it to advantage to open an art school, with competent teachers to instruct in drawing, painting, sculpture, china painting, decorative and designing. [Pillars] is well known as a sculptor of great ability: He was a student in the life class of the

1 Dick Bussard, “The Spirit of Youth Stands Tall in Riverside,” Jacksonville Journal, September 30, 1976, 60.

2 Jacksonville Metropolis, Sculptor Pillars Has Returned From Tallahassee: Awarded Contract for $10,000 Statue of Gorrie, n.d.; Jacksonville Metropolis, C. A. Pillars to Provide Statue of Dr. Gorrie, n.d. Note: To construct his one- quarter life size model of Gorrie, Pillars was provided “the only known existing portrait of [Gorrie]” from Capt. George H. Whiteside. (In Jacksonville Metropolis, ibid.); Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, “Local Sculptor Completes Model Gorrie Statue: Gift of State of Florida to Hall of Fame in Washington, D.C.,” n.d.

3 Pillars‟s bronze of Edmund Kirby-Smith created a stir because of Kirby-Smith‟s ties to the Confederacy and was held up for years before it was accepted at Statuary Hall. (In Theresa White, “The St. Augustine Art Association” Arbus Magazine, July/August 2001, http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewArticle.asp?id=11127 (accessed May 14, 2007).

Chicago Art Institute and for nine years student and assistant in the private studio of Larado [sic] Taft, Beaux Arts, and Julian‟s and Mercier‟s [sic] studios Paris.4

The founder of the first school of art in Jacksonville professing to give its students a regular foundation in drawing and modeling for a professional career as artists.5 “Mr. Pillars, „the pioneer of legitimate art in Florida,‟ has had 28 years experience as a sculptor as well as the advantage of the best training as given in the Beaux Arts in Paris and standard American art schools…We hope that the city will show its aesthetic sense by adorning some of its parks, boulevards, and public buildings with some of her own sculptor‟s works.”6

“Florida must be very proud to have such talent in the state and should take every means to inform the public.7

Education and Training

Charles Adrian Pillars was born in Rantoul, Illinois, on July 4, 1870, to John Adrian

Pillars, a railroad engineer, and Ellen Pillars. He was the oldest of their three children including sister Nettie and brother Bert.8 Educated in the public schools, he enrolled at the University of

Illinois, but did not graduate. He had begun lessons in clay modeling when he was 12.9 Pillars had “already attracted much notice” as a gifted young artist and was celebrated by his hometown

Champaign (Illinois) Daily Gazette in 1887: “While other boys were lounging around on goods boxes or developing their energies to avoiding any useful exertion, Charley was studiously at

4 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union and Citizen, 1901. Pillars‟s teacher, Lorado Taft, not Pillars, studied at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris. At the 1893 World‟s Columbian Exposition, Pillars worked with Edward Clark Potter who studied at the Académie Julian in Paris with Antonin Mercié. (In Lewis W. Williams, II, “Lorado Taft: American Sculptor and Art Missionary” (PhD diss, University of Chicago, 1958).

5 Jacksonville Metropolis, 1910.

6 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, 1910.

7 St. Augustine Record, June 4, 1925.

8 U. S. Bureau of Census. Tenth Census of the United States, Champaign County, Illinois, 1880. (Washington, DC: Author), 17.

9 Jacksonville Metropolis, April 30, 1914, 1-9.

work developing the talent he possesses.”10 At age 15, Pillars entered the private studio of one of the country‟s best known sculptors, Lorado Taft, completing a period of nine years‟ training as student and assistant. While working with Taft, Pillars executed public statues in bronze and marble and numerous works independently, including a set of bronze doors (Figure 3-3) for the

Leland Stanford Museum of California.11 As a connection to the classical design of the museum, the doors were embossed with scenes illustrating the history of architecture.12

In 1886, Taft became an instructor at the Art Institute of Chicago, holding that position from 1886 to 1907. In mid-June of 1891, Taft‟s sketches were accepted for the proposed

Agricultural Building of the World‟s Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago. The sculptures produced for the World‟s Fair gave Taft his first fame as a serious sculptor.13 In 1891, Taft directed the fair‟s sculptural contract which lead to the contract to “point up” (the process to enlarge from one-quarter size models to final size in white plaster-like staff14) all of the statues

10 Champaign Daily Gazette, 1887. as a teenager, Pillars carved a portrait bust of Mark Carley, a founder of his hometown the City of Champaign, Illinois. See J. R. Stewart, A Standard History of Campaign County, Illinois, vols I & II, 1918, http://champaign.ilgenweb.net/biographies/bio0282.html (accessed December 5, 2009).

11 Jacksonville Metropolis, April 30, 1914, 1-9. Pillars was employed as assistant to Lorado Taft, professor of sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago. Following the death of her husband, Jane Stanford oversaw the construction of the Stanford Museum at Stanford University. Osborne, Carol M. Museum Builders in the West: The Stanfords as Collectors and Patrons of Art 1870-1906. ( Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Museum of Art, Stanford University, 1986).

12 Richard Joncas, Building on the Past: The Making of the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University, 1977), 42.

13 Lewis W. Williams, “Lorado Taft: American Sculptor and Art Missionary,” 1958.

14 Staff was a perishable mixture of plaster and horsehair, jute, straw or some other binding agent. The mixture was cast in gelatin molds and easily worked and tinted. See Donald Martin Reynolds, Masters of American Sculpture: The Figurative Tradition from the American Renaissance to the Millennium. (New York: Abbeville Press, 1993), 24-28. The fair came to an end on October 30, 1893. In January and July 1894, fires consumed many of the fair structures. By 1896, the World‟s Columbian Exposition Salvage Company completed the disassembling of the remaining fair buildings. In Stephen Kerber, “Florida and the World‟s Columbian Exposition of 1893,” Florida Historical Quarterly 66, no. 1 (July 1987): 48-9.

and groups for the exhibition buildings.15 Sculptors Daniel Chester French and Edward Clark

Potter collaborated with Taft and studio assistants in modeling the various groups for the

Exposition.16 The finest sculptors in the world were invited to participate in the exhibitions at the

World‟s Fair of 189317 and the noted landscape designer Frederick Law Olmsted was commissioned to select and design the site.18

World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893

While Pillars did not have the opportunity to study at the Academy in Rome or the École de Beaux-Arts in Paris, as assistant to Taft in 1892-1893, he could work with the major sculptors of the day. In 1886, when Taft was appointed to teach at the Chicago Art Institute, “he engaged young Charlie Pillars as an assistant.”19 The Columbian Exposition in Chicago provided the first major opportunity for American sculptors to show their skill to a mass audience; the experience for those sculptors initiated new social and occupational relationships.20 For eighteen months,

Pillars worked with Daniel Chester French on the head and bust of the 60-foot signature monument Republic (Figure 3-4) in the Court of Honor, and collaborated with renowned equestrian sculptor Edward C. Potter for two of the thirteen-foot horses on Taft‟s Columbus

Quadriga (Figure 3-5) and the female figures and one herald of the riders‟ group that

15 Stephen Kerber, “Florida and the World‟ Columbian Exposition of 1893,” Florida Historical Quarterly 66, no. 1 (July 1987): 65.

16 Michael T. Richman, “The Early Career of Daniel Chester French,” 1974; Smithsonian Institution. Edward Clark Potter (1857-1923)Papers, 1903-1933, 2009. http://sirismm.si.edu/siris/collectionaaa2.htm (accessed on December 9, 2009).

17 Adeline Adams, The Spirit of American Sculpture.” (New York, NY: The National Sculpture Society, 1929).

18 Donald Martin Reynolds, Masters of American Sculpture: The Figurative Tradition from the American Renaissance to the Millennium. (New York: Abbeville Press, 1993), 25.

19 Lewis W. Williams, “Lorado Taft,” 1958, 52.

20 Michelle C. Bogart, Public Sculpture and the Civic Ideal: New York City 1890-1930. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1989).

surmounted the Arch of the Peristyle (Figure 3-6). Pillars also produced “other figures” and his original work, The Dancing Faun, for the Horticultural Building of the Fair.21

Chicago, Illinois

After the Exposition, Pillars returned to Taft‟s studio for a year where he did a bronze cupidon frieze, a figure of Robin Hood, and several lesser works, including “eleven scenes from the life of Columbus for the Columbus Memorial Building constructed in 1892.22 “ Sculpture, painting, cupolas, and bronze . . . [as] the interior and exterior furnishings,” described in an 1893

Rand McNally map,23 may well refer to Pillars‟s works in the early Chicago skyscraper. The building was demolished in 1959. While working in Chicago, Pillars‟s model in the competition for the civil war hero Philip Henry Sheridan equestrian statue at Chicago, Illinois, was one of five selected from fifty in competition for a $50,000 award. At this time, he also submitted his design for two civic war monuments in the South: a Jefferson Davis memorial in Richmond,

Virginia, and an equestrian statue of Nathan Bedford Forest in Memphis, Tennessee.24

Jacksonville, Florida

In 1890 when Pillars was 20 years of age, he and his extended family relocated to

Jacksonville from Illinois. Initially, he was associated with Miss Jacobi‟s School (Figure 3-7), described as an instructor of sculpture in the “modern French method” (Figure 3-8), for its

21 Jacksonville Metropolis, April 30, 1914.

22 Louis Ludlow, Florida‟s Gift to the Nation Perpetuating the Name of Dr. John Gorrie, who Invented Process for Making Artificial Ice, Unveiled. Jacksonville Metropolis, April 30, 1914, 19; Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, 1917.

23 “The Columbus Memorial Building on State and Washington Streets in Chicago „introduce[s] a still larger use of metals and artistic ornament into Chicago‟s principal architectures.” “Sculpture, paintings, cupolas, and bronze enter into its interior and exterior furnishings.” Sabin, “Old Chicago: History & Architecture in Vintage Postcards.” http://www.patsabin.com/illinois/index.htm (accessed December 9, 2009).

24 Jacksonville Metropolis , Sculptor Pillars Has Returned From Tallahassee: Awarded Contract for $10,000 Statue of Gorrie, n.d.

students ranging from children to adults (Figure 3-9). By 1908, Pillars (Figure 3-10) had expanded as a sole practitioner and developed his reputation in the community with frequent coverage of his exhibitions and art openings in Jacksonville‟s three local newspapers,

Jacksonville Journal, Jacksonville Metropolis, and Jacksonville Florida Times Union. Emulating the career development strategy of his teacher Taft,25 Pillars opened a studio for exhibition and art classes in Jacksonville, “Adrian Pillars‟s studio in room 12 of the Mohawk Building will be open every afternoon this week,” “On Saturday afternoon Mr. Pillars received those interested in art at his studio at 21 West Adams Street.”26 His studio established and a solid reputation developing, in 1915 Pillars married Jacksonville native, Ruth Zaring, a student in his art school.27

By the 1920s, Pillars was recognized in the local Florida Times-Union as Jacksonville‟s finest sculptor,28 and had been commissioned by Jacksonville‟s most prominent citizens. Pillars took his mentor Taft‟s advice and developed a network of clientele originating with Bion Barnett and his Barnett banking family and personal requests for portraits of family members (Figure 3-

11). Pillars benefited from the financial and social introductions that he developed and soon was engaged in bronze “vanity” portrait medallions and busts of prominent Jacksonville citizens

(Figure 3-12) which included US Senator Duncan U. Fletcher 29 (Figure 3-13), Martha Reid, fertilizer manufacturing executive E. O. Painter,30 Jacksonville civic leader Colonel James J.

25 Taft used his studio as a meeting place to become acquainted with influential members of Chicago society. (In Lewis W. Williams, “Lorado Taft: American Sculptor and Art Missionary” (doctoral dissertation, University of Chicago, 1958), 52.

26 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union and Citizen, April 4, 1901; and Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, 1909.

27 Jacksonville Metropolis, “Memorial to Gorrie Unveiled.” Ancestry.com, “Descendants of John Adrian Pillars,” http://www.ancestry.com/?o_xid=21837&o_lid=21837 (accessed June 13, 2007).

28 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union , “C. A. Pillars: Jacksonville‟s Sculptor,” n.d.

29 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, 1909a; Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, 1909b.

30 Jacksonville Metropolis, 1915.

Daniel (1894),31 Dr. A. S. Baldwin (1894), President of Board of Trade,32 William D. Barnett, president of the Barnett National Bank,33 J. Durkee, prominent local businessman,34 and the carrara marble bust of the children of Perry Elwood (Figure 3-14).

In response to the popularity of displaying sculpture in the home during the nineteenth and early-twentieth century, Pillars found a market and financial success in the sale of his small bronze pieces. At the turn of the century, bronze casting had become a fully developed industry, and Pillars had contracted with the largest American foundries, Gorham Manufacturing and

Tiffany & Co., to create his work. His studio inventory in the early years of his practice included

Genius of the Swamp, Southern Womanhood, The Spirit of the Woods, Fountain of Youth,

Dreams, Landing of Ponce de Leon, The Storm, The Wind Goddess, Solitude, The Awakening of the River, Kiss of the South Wind, Love of the Lily, The Vampire, Fountain of Unity, Parting of

David and Jonathan, Deer Hunt, Opossum Hunt, and The Fallen Leaf,35 allegorical scenes that would have appealed to early-twentieth century audiences. American bronze foundries and the demand for decorative small bronzes flourished until the beginning of the First World War when all fine-art casting was discontinued.36

31 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, 1894.

32 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union,1898.

33 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union,1900.

34 Pillars could have encountered Joseph Durkee at the World‟s Fair, as in 1891, Durkee was on the thirteen- member executive committee to finance the Florida exhibit at the World‟s Columbian Exposition of 1893. The Florida exhibit was a replica of Fort Marion at St. Augustine, Florida. In Stephen Kerber, “Florida, and the World‟s Columbian Exposition of 1893.” The Florida Historical Quarterly, 66, no. 1 (1987): 29; Kerber, ibid, also noted that in 1892 Henry Flagler committed to advertising in the Florida fair gazetteer. At the time, Flagler was considering plans to extend his railroad and hotel system south along the east coast of Florida, 36-37.

35 Jacksonville Metropolis,1915.

36 Michael Edward Shapiro, Bronze Casting and American Sculpture: 1850-1900 The American Art Series. (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1985), 147.

On March 15, 1910, the Springfield Improvement Association dedicated a cherub monument to the group‟s organizer and first president, Mrs. B. F. Dillon, in ceremonies at the

Third and Silver Street corner of Springfield Park. Mayor W. S. Jordan and Judge N. P. Bryan presided over the ceremony to unveil the bronze figure of a cherub holding a dolphin in its arms, described as “a real work of art.”37 Pillars cast a cherub fountain (Figure 3-15), the design of which was a copy of the famous fountain in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, Italy, the work of

Verrocchio.

The awards, respectively, in 1914 and 1918 to Pillars for commissions for the two Florida statues in Statuary Hall at the U. S. Capitol cemented his reputation. When the new south wing of the U. S. Capitol was completed and the House of Representatives moved into its new chambers in 1864, the vacant former chamber was designated to be “A hall of statues, in marble or bronze, not exceeding two in number for each State, of distinguished citizens of the state.”38

The legislation in itself was a deliberate act of reconciliation passed just before the termination of the Civil War. When the union of the nation had ceased to be an issue, the regional diversity of each state could be safely cultivated. Forty years passed before one Confederate state submitted a statue, and by then, heroic depictions of advocates of slavery, Confederate war heroes, and segregationists were accepted.39

An accomplished sculptor in both marble and cast bronze, Pillars carved a marble heroic statue of Dr. John Gorrie in 1914 and in 1918 cast a bronze monument to Gen Kirby-Smith.. Dr.

37 Jacksonville Metropolis, March 16, 1910. Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, March 16, 1910.

38 United States, Architect of the Capitol, Compilation of Works of Art and Other Objects in the United States Capitol. Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1965, 1952, 203. In 1933, Congress passed a law relocating some of the statues within Statuary Hall and reducing the representation to one statue per state.

39 Barry Schwartz, “The Social Context of Commemoration: A Study in Collective Memory,” Social Forces 61, no. 2 (Dec 1982), 390.

John Gorrie, as memorialized in one of the Florida statues at the U. S. Capitol (Figure 3-16), was an eminent West Florida physician who held the patent on mechanical refrigeration that he developed to alleviate the suffering of the sick, a process that later led to the inventions of air conditioning and mechanical ice making. Patriotic citizens of Florida had recent memories and some experience in the relief afforded by Gorrie‟s ice machine during the 1988 yellow fever epidemic in Jacksonville and moved on the 1907 nomination by civil war veteran, Col. G. N.

Saussy,40 that Gorrie be honored. Pillars‟s personal friend, U. S. Senator William J. Bryan, presided at the ceremony unveiling the marble statue.41

General Edmund Kirby-Smith was a St. Augustine native and Florida‟s only native-born

Confederate general.42 Not only was Pillars‟s entry submission of Kirby-Smith (Figure 3-17)43 unanimously chosen by the special committee appointed by the legislature,44 but his work was preferred over the application of Italian artist, Professor Paoli Testi, and nationally known sculptor, Fritz Triebel.45 Finalists, local sculptor Pillars and Testi from New York and a member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Italy, appeared before the committee of confederate

40 Jacksonville Metropolis, February 28, 1914, 1.

41Louis Ludlow, “Florida‟s Gift to the Nation Perpetuating the Name of Dr. John Gorrie, Who Invented Process for Making Artificial Ice, Unveiled”. Sculptor Who Executed Gorrie Statue and Girl Who Unveiled It Today.” April 30, 1914, 1. Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, August 28, 1914, 5. Frank M. Smith, “Florida‟s Contribution to Statuary Hall Honors Inventor of Mechanical Ice,” Washington Daily News, September 14, 1914, n.d.; Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, “Local Sculptor Completes Model Gorrie Statue: Gift of State of Florida to Hall of Fame in Washington, DC,” n.d.

42 Dick Bussard, “The Spirit of Youth Stands Tall in Riverside.” September 30, 1976, 60.

43 Figure 3-17 includes the nude study of Gen. Kirby-Smith by Pillars, which was typical of Pillar‟s style and a matter of course for the academically-trained sculptor working from the human figure.

44 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, “Sculptor Pillars Has Returned,” n.d.

45 Pillars was defended as a candidate for the competition when the committee was taken with sculptor Triebel, the man and not necessarily his work. In a letter to the editor of the Jacksonville Metropolis, a Mr. Mott was critical of committee chairman, Col. James K. Munnerlyn, on considering an “outsider” for the Kirby-Smith contract on account of his impressive personality in preference to “our sculptor Pillars‟s proven ability.” Mott noted, “Pillars and other artists of note [in the competition] were notified they were not „impressive‟ enough” and chastised the committee that „all Floridians are not prone to discredit home talent‟” (1917).

veterans; Pillars was chosen and was awarded $10,000 each for the statues of Dr. Gorrie and

Gen. Kirby-Smith.46 This selection gained for him the distinction at that time of being the only artist to receive the contract for both Hall of Fame statues.47 He was also recognized as a Florida sculptor chosen to create the Florida statues in the Capitol.48 The Kirby-Smith bronze was so well received there was a movement by the United Daughters of the Confederacy to have an additional casting made at the Gorham Company foundry for the City of St. Augustine;49 however, the fundraising campaign fell short of the needed amount. In 1922, the Pillars‟s statue of Gen. Kirby-Smith was presented to the House of Representatives in a ceremony presided over by Pillars‟s personal friend, Senator Duncan U. Fletcher.50

In 1918, Pillars received a commission from the Jacksonville firm, Wilson & Toomer

Fertilizer Company, for its twenty-fifth anniversary commemorative award presented to Lorenzo

A. Wilson, the president and founder, by the 22 office employees and field force (Figure 3-18),51

Pillars created a sterling silver statuette cast by Gorham & Co., in New York entitled The Kiss of

46 Sunday Times-Union, “February 12, 1915; Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, “ Kirby-Smith Statue Commission Meets Here December 6 To Pass on Completed Model of Statue,” n.d. Note: Pillars created the bronze from photographs of the general taken during the Civil War and “several men personally acquainted with the general declared the likeness to be perfect.” Pillars also had access to one of the general‟s military coats for his exact measurements.” In American Stone Trade, Kirby-Smith Monument, June 1, 1917, 30. For a description of the installation ceremonies for both statues in the Hall of Fame, together with a biography of Pillars, see Charles E. Fairman, Art & Artists of the Capitol of the United States of America. (Washington, DC: United States Printing Office, 1927).

47 Sunday Times-Union, February 21, 1915, 1; Sunday Times-Union, March 21, 1915, 1.

48 Editorial, Jacksonville Florida Times-Union,1918.

49 American Stone Trade, “Kirby Smith Monument,” Vol. XVII, Chicago, IL: author, June 1, 1917; St. Augustine Evening Record, March 26, 1918.

50 H. McGowan, “Thanks of Congress Given to Florida for Statue of General E. Kirby Smith,” Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, 1922. In 1917, Pillars had submitted for comment a photo of the model of his Kirby-Smith statue to Senator Fletcher. September 18, 1917 letter from United States Senator Duncan U. Fletcher to C. Adrian Pillars, Esq. (in private collection).

51 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, “Wilson & Toomer Fertilizer,” 1918. Pillars‟s wife “ Ruth was the model” for the Kiss of Science design (note on reverse of photograph in Pillars family archives).

Science (Figure 3-19). In 1918, the Heard bank building was “Jacksonville‟s biggest and most modern structure,”52 and in 1928, Pillars was contracted to create a life-size heroic statue of J. J.

Heard, who had founded the Heard National Bank53. The location of the statue of Heard is unknown today.

St. Augustine, Florida

From 1919 until 1932, Pillars enjoyed financial success as Florida‟s most famous sculptor and built his dream home in nearby St. Augustine. He, his wife Ruth, and their three children lived in his home and studio at 16 May Street, known today as one of the landmarks of the nation‟s oldest city.54 Pillars referred to his St. Augustine home and studio as Homwald

(Figure 3-20).55 Pillars‟s studio was a beautiful reproduction of an old world castle: On one side, the doors were “high and wide enough to drive in a team of horses.” The studio itself was two stories high.”56 Pillars lost Homwold to foreclosure during the severe economic times of the

Great Depression.

During the time he lived in St. Augustine, Pillars developed a significant patron in Dr.

Andrew Anderson, former mayor of the city and agent for Florida developer, Henry M. Flagler.

In 1912, at Dr. Anderson‟s request, Pillars created a memorial bronze tablet in Trinity Church

(Figure 3-21) in memory of Anderson‟s second wife, Elizabeth Smethurst Anderson (1864-

52 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, December 25, 1918, 13.

53 Ibid.

54 David Nolan, The Houses of St. Augustine. (Sarasota, FL: Pineapple Press, 1995).

55 “My studio for past nine years.” On reverse of photo, Pillars penned the following: “Home & Studio, 16 May Street, St. Augustine. Moved in March 26, 1923; occupied until November 7, 1931. 8 years, 7 months, 12 days. Studio: 33 feet under sky-light. 38 feet ground to parapet. Studio 25 x 41+.”

56 Sadie W. Burkhim, “Sculptor Wins Praise for Bronze Memorial Statue,” Gainesville Daily Sun, June 14, 1928, 2.

1912), Elizabeth‟s sister, Laura Malcolm Smethurst (1874-1898), and their mother, Mary Gibbs

Elizabeth Smethurst (1844-1904).

In 1921, Anderson commissioned and donated a bronze flagstaff and pedestal (Figure 3-

22) to the city of St. Augustine. It was dedicated in a public ceremony at Anderson Circle on the bay front of St. Augustine, on Armistice Day, November 11, 1921, as a memorial “to victory, to peace, and to the youth of this city who served their country in the world war, 1916-1918.”

Thousands were said to have flocked to the ceremony to dedicate the pedestal as groups and bands paraded down Bay Street. At noon, “Old Glory” was raised and unfurled on the flagstaff, and, at the request of President Warren G. Harding, Taps was played. Dr. Anderson formally presented the memorial to the city.57

Pillars designed the flag for St. Augustine at Dr. Anderson‟s request and created a public memorial to the 650 men from St. Augustine who had served in the world war.58 Pillars was also commissioned to create a bronze tablet—now at the St. Augustine Post Office (Figure 3-23) and designed the granite base for the statue erected to commemorate the first known Spanish explorer to the New World. The statue of Juan Ponce de Leon, whose expedition landed at St. Augustine in 1513, is located between the historic Slave Market and the Bridge of Lions. The statue was dedicated on November 11, 1923, and is a replica of the one in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Neither statue is signed, and both were cast by an unknown Spanish foundry.59

On January 18, 1924, Pillars joined twenty writers, painters, sculptors, and photographers who had founded a summer art colony in St. Augustine and became a charter member of The

57 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, November 12, 1921, 1.

58 St. Augustine Record, January 15, 1929.

59 Enzo Torcoletti, Director of Sculpture Studies, Flagler College, St. Augustine, FL, and principal restorer of Pillars‟s works in North Florida, discussion with the author, May 13, 2010.

Galleon Club. In January 1925, Pillars conducted classes in sculpture and modeling, assisted by

Frank Micka, who had studied sculpture in his native Czechoslovakia and later worked with the sculptor of the Mt. Rushmore National Memorial, John Gutzon Borglum.60 In White‟s history of the St. Augustine Art Association, she noted that the success of the organization was due not only to patrons, but to the dedication of local artists. Pillars and a small cadre of artists kept the spirit of the association alive in the early years of the Great Depression, and the arts group became a traveling show, as the members were homeless and often could not conduct meetings because they didn‟t have fifty cents for rent.61

In 1930, the mood in Florida was bleak. The state was in economic ruin, devastated by the real estate bust of 1926 and crushed by the Wall Street crash of 1929. Hundreds of Florida banks failed. The metal skeletons of high rise office buildings, once indicators of the land boom, stood rusting, and new construction ceased. By 1931, Pillars despaired. On February 15 of that year, he had written on the flyleaf of a copy of the the book describing his contribution to the

Hall of Fame at the U. S. Capitol,62 “Homwold. St. Augustine, Fla., (16 May St.) Feb. 15th 1931.

To my brother [Bert], that the few tangible results of my efforts may be preserved.”

Years of the Great Depression

Collapsing under the fiscal challenges for an independent artist during the Great

Depression, on November 7, 1931, the Pillars family moved to a Jacksonville homeless camp

60 Robert W. Torchia, Lost Colony: The Artists of St. Augustine, 1930-1950. (St. Augustine, FL: The Lightner Museum, 2001).

61 Theresa Ann White, “The St. Augustine Art Association,” Arbus Magazine, July/August 2001, http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewArticle.asp?id=11127 (accessed May 14, 2007).

62 Charles E. Fairman, Art and Artists of the Capitol of the United States of America, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1927).

along Strawberry Creek (now known as Oakwood Villa).63 The family of five lived in one of the few houses still standing among families residing in tents and cooking meals over tripod fires; the home had no electricity and no running water but the structure did have a stove for bathing.

During that winter, Ann Pillars recalls Christmastime rose candy or “Oriental Candy,” as her father named his confectionary invention, and for the enchanting and creative stories that her father would relate both to entertain the children and hold the struggling family together.64

Sarasota, Florida

In 1932, Pillars received a letter from the Ringling School of Art in Sarasota, Florida, offering him a position as art professor with a salary of $100 a month.65 Departing Jacksonville to great fanfare, “C. Adrian Pillars, local sculptor who has an international reputation, has been appointed instructor in sculpture at the Ringling School of Art,66 Pillars borrowed a car and moved his family to Sarasota, where he was Ringling‟s first instructor in sculpture.67

In 1932, the Ringling School of Art was beginning its second year of classes, and the opening ceremony included supporters such as Governor Doyle Carlton, John Ringling, and Dr.

Ludd M. Spivey, president of Southern College and director of the school. The Ringling

Museum contained treasures collected over 30 years by John and Mabel Ringling68 Dr. Spivey

63 Interestingly, Morgan V. Gress, the chairman of the Citizens Committee which had led the fundraising campaign and award to Pillars for Spiritualized Life, was in 1924 the chairman of the first-ever Community Chest fundraising campaign. From 1930 to 1939, the funds provided for 87,507 Duval County children and adults devastated by the depression. From the anniversary brochure of United Way of Northeast Florida, Seventy-Five Years of Working for Our Community. (Jacksonville: Author, 1999), 1.

64 Ann Pillars Durham, discussion with the author, August 13, 2010.

65 Ann Pillars Durham (daughter of Charles Adrian Pillars) in letter to the author December 5, 2009.

66 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, June 23, 1932; Ann Pillars Durham, discussion with the author, August 13, 2010.

67 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, June 23, 1932; Jacksonville Journal, November 25, 1932.

68 Sarasota Herald, “Charles Adrian Pillars of Jacksonville Will Join the Ringling Faculty This Year,” 1935; “Ringling School Advance Registrations Show Gain,” 1935.

had negotiated with Ringling for the opening of the art school as a branch of Southern College with an eye toward his financial support as well as to provide access for art students to

Ringling‟s vast collection of seventeenth century sculpture and paintings in his Italianate villa in

Sarasota. After much negotiation, in 1931 the School of Fine and Applied Art of the John and

Mabel Ringling Art Museum opened, and Dr. Spivey oversaw the administration of both campuses69

At the Ringling School of Art, Pillars was joined by an artist acquaintance from his youth, Adolph Robert Shulz of Illinois. Shulz and Pillars, as faculty members, also volunteered as members and exhibitors of the Sarasota Art Association.70 The Sarasota Herald, in an effort to boost the community and support the art school as “one of Sarasota‟s greatest assets,” interviewed Ringling faculty weekly for the “Know Our Faculty” section.71 Ringling Rumors described the new faculty: “Among outstanding artists who will constitute the faculty for the coming year are Adolph Robert Shulz, founder-president of Brown County Indiana Art Colony, and Charles Adrian Pillars [who] will again head the department of sculpture.” The article continued that displayed in Pillars‟s studio classroom was the “design for a huge fountain called

Diana of the Tides . . . where the moon upon the tides is represented by a beautiful female figure standing on the crest of the sweeping wave of waters.” Pillars also included in his classroom a group of small figures and models for fountains and other garden statuary. Among those were models of The Awakening of Welaka (the Indian name for the St. Johns River), Falling Leaves,

69 Robert E. Perkins, The First Fifty Years-Ringling School of Art and Design. Sarasota, FL 1931-1981. (Sarasota, FL: Ringling School of Art and Design Library Association, 1982).

70 Sarasota Herald, “Sarasota‟s Fame as an Art Center Growing as a Result of Work of Association Here: Several Members Have Achieved Distinction and Praise Throughout United States; Sarasotan Heads Florida Federation,” 1935.

71 Bervin A. Johnson, “Know Our Faculty: News of Student and Faculty Activities at the Ringling School of Art and Junior College,” Sarasota Herald, 1933.

Ashes, Lady Godiva Taking Down her Hair, The Wilted Flower, and El Penserosa. He also displayed photographs of his early sculptural pieces to include medallions, heads in the round, and portrait statues of heroic size.”72 Today the location of most of these works is unknown.

In 1933, Dr. and Mrs. Spivey commissioned Pillars for a memorial for their seven-year- old son who had died from the bite of a rabid dog in the prior year. In a studio exhibition at the

Ringling School of Art, Pillars opened his studio at Room S-2 for a public viewing of several of his current sculptural studies where the Spivey memorial urn (Figure 3-24) was displayed.

Mounted on a pink marble base, the urn was four feet three inches high with a diameter of two feet, cast in bronze, with figures in relief. At the base is a memorial notation, “A vessel of God that is not and cannot be broken.”73 The bronze urn contained a father and a mother figure on either side with arms outstretched and meeting. Between them is the figure of a child with feet resting on clouds depicted at the base of the vase. The child‟s hands are raised to the arms of the father and mother above his head. Between the two adult figures is a brazier for incense burning.

The Spivey memorial urn took more than a year for Pillars to create.74 He used his younger daughter as a model for the child.75

The youth‟s upraised hands are clinging to the arms of the two other figures whose hands are clasped. The urn was designed to stand in a garden with a rectangular reflecting pool that the

Spivey‟s eight-year-old son enjoyed. Dr. Ludd Spivey and his wife commissioned the memorial

72 M. R. McRae, “Many Famous Artists Make Homes in the City; Brief Sketches of Their Careers,” Sarasota Herald, 1935.

73 Robert H. Sherman, “Sculpture Is Intrinsic Unit of Local Art: Proof Given in Show at Ringling School,” Sarasota Herald, February 26, 1935.

74 Ibid.

75 As an eight-year-old, Pillars daughter Ann recalls her pose was to stand holding her hands up in the air, supported by two oars from their rowboat, and her father became vexed with her squirming. Ann Pillars Durham, discussion with author, November 15, 2009.

urn to be installed on the campus at the Florida Southern College campus in Lakeland. Alan

Spivey Hall, one of the college buildings erected in 1935, was named in memory of the youth memorialized by the urn.76 The Spivey bronze urn was Pillars‟s last artwork, completed on the day he died.77

While a faculty member at Ringling School of Art, Pillars served for two terms as a member of the Florida Federation of Art. In 1934, the Florida Emergency Relief Administration announced a program theme competition, and Pillars‟s submission, a medallion, was chosen.

Pillars‟s conception of the arts was symbolically portrayed as the National Relief Administration eagle mothering the arts, the arts being found naked and “hungry for the art experience in

America to hover and feed them” (Figure 3-25).78 The studio model of the medallion was exhibited in Jacksonville and displayed on the cover of the Eighth Annual Exhibition of the

Federation in Jacksonville that year.79 The bronze medallion, however, was never cast.

Sarasota, too, suffered from the economic disaster of the Florida land boom in 1926 and the 1929 depression. Desperate to save money, in 1933 the Sarasota County school board closed the public schools and reopened them on a tuition plan. Class sizes were reduced by 50 percent, and the school year decreased to seven months.80 When Pillars and his family relocated to

Sarasota in 1932, the Sarasota community was struggling to weather the depression.81 During the

76 Mac Da Camara, “Adrian Pillars Displays Work in Process of Creation at Exhibit: Six Artists Included in Show at Art School,” Sarasota Herald, March 25, 1935.

77 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, June 25, 1938.

78 Sarasota Herald, October 22, 1934; Robert H. Sherman, “Sculpture Is Intrinsic Unit of Local Art: Proof Given in Show at Ringling School,1934.

79 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, September 7, 1934; Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, November 14, 1934.

80 Ruthmary Bauer, “Sarasota: Hardship and Tourism in the 1930s,” Florida Historical Quarterly, 76(2), (1997), 135-151.

81 Ann Pillars Durham recalled graphic evidence of the hardship of the Great Depression on the Sarasota community. In those days, there were many houses available. People could not pay their mortgages and just walked

1934-35 school year, with 13 day students and one dormitory student registered for the fall semester, the college president presented faculty with an ultimatum: Move their families into the empty dorms or look for other jobs. Ringling School of Art teachers received five months‟ salary out of eight; in the next year, they were paid for seven months.

In 1936, Ringling School of Art was hit by the economic hardships of the Great

Depression and discontinued Pillars‟s position there as professor of sculpture. Ironically, as the

Great Depression wore on, in a 1937 New Year‟s advertisement, the Florida National Bank in

Jacksonville displayed an image of Pillars‟s Life monument to rally the community, “Let the buoyant message of the Memorial Park statue symbolize your attitude this year” (Figure 3-26).

Pillars and his family returned to Jacksonville, where he found employment with the national artist relief program, the Federal Arts Project.

Chapter 4 addresses the issues of nudity and negotiating his conceptual ambitions that confronted Pillars and the committee for his Life monument. The next chapter also includes a discussion of Pillars‟s professional challenges in establishing his artistic practice as a classically trained sculptor in the conservative South, patronage opportunities available at the turn of the twentieth century, and the reliability of public resources as a stimulus to artistic employment.

away. When the Pillars family looked for housing near the Ringling College of Art campus, one rental house stood empty with the previous occupant‟s furniture, bed linens, pantry items all in place, and another rental property had a very large blood stain on the floor from a suicide (discussion with the author, March 7, 2010).

Figure 3-1 U. S. Capitol Statuary Hall, Washington, D.C. (Source in public domain). Photo courtesy of United States Architect of the Capitol, Compilation of Works of Art and Other Objects in the United States Capitol. Washington, D. C.: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1965.

Figure 3-2 Floor Plan U. S. Capitol Statuary Hall, Washington, D.C. (Photo, private collection).

Figure 3-3 Charles Adrian Pillars, History of Architecture, c. 1884. Doors (three) from the Leland Stanford Junior Museum. Bronze. Palo Alto, California. A), B), C). Photos courtesy of and reprinted with the permission of the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Stanford University.

Figure 3-4 Daniel Chester French, The Republic, c. 1893, Chicago Exposition of 1893, demolished 1896. Reproduced by permission from Kristin Standaert, Paul V. Galvin Library Digital History Collection, Illinois Institute of Technology.

Figure 3-5 Daniel Chester French and E. C. Potter, Columbus Quadriga, c. 1893, Chicago Exposition of 1893, demolished 1896. Reproduced by permission from Kristin Standaert, Paul V. Galvin Library Digital History Collection, Illinois Institute of Technology.

Figure 3-6 Arch Peristyle, c. 1893, World‟s Columbian Exposition of 1893, demolished 1896. Reproduced by permission from Kristin Standaert, Paul V. Galvin Library Digital History Collection, Illinois Institute of Technology.

Figure 3-7 Miss Jacobi’s School Record, c. 1907-1908. Jacksonville, Florida. (Private collection).

Figure 3-8 Teachers. Miss Jacobi’s School Record, c. 1907-1908. Jacksonville, Florida. (Private collection).

Figure 3-9 Miss Jacobi’s School, c. 1907-1908. Charles Adrian Pillars, far left. (Photo, private collection).

Figure 3-10 Charles Adrian Pillars, c. 1908. (Photo, private collection).

Figure 3-11 Charles Adrian Pillars, Twin Sons of Bion Barnett, n.d. Bronze. Location unknown. (Photo, private collection).

A B

Figure 3-12 Charles Adrian Pillars, Unnamed Portrait Medallions, n.d. Bronze. Location unknown. (Photo, private collection)..

Figure 3-13 Charles Adrian Pillars, Senator Duncan U. Fletcher, 1909. Bronze. Location unknown. (Photo, private collection).

Figure 3-14 Charles Adrian Pillars, Children of Perry Elwood, 1916. Marble, “Life size.” Location unknown. (Photo, private collection).

Figure 3-15 Charles Adrian Pillars, Cherub Fountain, 1910. Bronze. Klutho Park, Jacksonville, Florida (Photo, Dianne Crum Dawood).

Figure 3-16 Charles Adrian Pillars, Dr. John Gorrie, 1914, 7 feet. Marble. US Capitol, Washington, D.C. (Photo, private collection).

Figure 3-17 Charles Adrian Pillars, Gen. Kirby Smith, 1918. Bronze. US Capitol, Washington, D.C. A) Nude study model, B) Studio model, C) Bronze model. (Photos, private collection).

Figure 3-18 Image from Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, “Wilson & Toomer Fertilizer Company Celebrates Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of Organization of the Concern: Wilson Gets Beautiful Statuette,” 1918. (Charles Adrian Pillars at far left). Detail, A) Kiss of Science award. (Source in public domain). Reproduced by permission from Jacksonville Florida Times-Union.

Figure 3-19 Charles Adrian Pillars, The Kiss of Science, 1918. Plasteline model. Location unknown. (Photo, private collection).

Figure 3-20 Homwold, c. 1923-1931. “16 May Street, St. Augustine, Florida” on reverse. (Photo, private collection).

Figure 3-21 Charles Adrian Pillars, Anderson Memorial Plaque, c. 1920. Bronze. Trinity Episcopal Church, St. Augustine, Florida. (Photo, private collection).

Figure 3-22 Charles Adrian Pillars, Anderson Memorial Flagstaff, c. 1921. Bronze. Anderson Circle, St. Augustine, Florida. (Photo, private collection).

Figure 3-23 . Charles Adrian Pillars, World War I Memorial Plaque, c. 1923. Bronze. US Post Office, St. Augustine, Florida. (Photo, private collection).

Figure 3-24 Charles Adrian Pillars, Spivey Memorial Urn, 1937. Bronze. Florida Southern College, Lakeland, Florida. (Photo, private collection).

Figure 3-25 Charles Adrian Pillars, Eagle Mothers: The Fine Arts , 1934. Program cover Eighth Annual Exhibition, Florida Federation of Art, Gallery of Fine Arts Society of Jacksonville. (Photo, private collection).

Figure 3-26 Florida National Bank of Jacksonville. “Let This Be The Spirit of 1937.” Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, January 1, 1937. Reprinted with permission of the Jacksonville Florida Times-Union.

CHAPTER 4 CAREER CHALLENGES AND STRATEGIES

Pillars did not study sculpture in the classical schools of France or Italy, but his native talent, skill, and industry led to his achieving both creative and commercial success. Following the unveiling of Life in 1924, which he believed was his best work,1 his ability to earn a living as a sculptor began to deteriorate. While he continued to enjoy artistic recognition for the next ten years, he struggled to secure commissions on the regional issue of repression and prudery, twentieth century changes in artistic taste, and scarcity of private and public commissions for artists during a national economic depression.

Nudity in Public Art

The original statue of Life created for the Memorial Park project contained so much detail that members of the Rotary Club asked Pillars to modify the genitalia to reflect the public sense of modesty and decorum.2 When the public announcement was made that Pillars‟s design had been chosen for the memorial, it was “with one or two exceptions” the committee judged that his idea was more original than any other presented. “The members of the committee criticized the model freely with a view to giving Mr. Pillars‟s suggestions for his guidance in working out the model.” 3 Even while the new Life monument was celebrated and appropriated by the

Jacksonville community as its iconic image (Figure 4-1), the public discourse about his nude sculpture and whether Pillars‟s working model was male or female was the subject of discussion, one that had “enough argument to start a dozen debating societies”4 (Figure 4-2).

1 Pat Barwald, “After 5 Years It Is Learned Who Posed for Classic Greek Statue in Memorial Park Here.

2 Daniel Filaroski, “Meaningful Pose In Memorial Monument,” November 11, 1999.

3 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, “Memorial Committee Inspects Model,” 1921.

4 Pat Barwald, “After 5 Years.” (See also George Harmon, “Clip from Reader Answers Mystery About Models for Park Statue,” Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, November 8, 1987).

Michael Kammen characterized the years prior to World War II as a time in which art prompted “fiercely contested arts-related controversies caused by ideological differences, obscenity, stylistic radicalism, and religious offense.”5 In 1899, all the nude statues at the Art

Institute of Chicago, mostly figures from antiquity, were moved or dismantled in response to public pressure. A Chicago law related to nudity in public places was passed in reaction to artistic representations by sculptor Lorado Taft and painter Paul Chabas. Taft, leader of the sculpture community in Chicago, had received an important commission in 1906 for a major work of public art to be called Fountain of the Great Lakes. Taft‟s concept presented three of the five allegorical female figures, bare-breasted and full figured, which some critics suggested looked like “packing house ladies,” a reference that did not flatter Chicago.6 Just prior to the

Fountain‟s dedication in 1913, a spirited court case ensued against a gallery in downtown

Chicago that had displayed a Paul Chabas painting of an entirely nude young woman. In an effort to prevent future such displays, the jury hearing the case proposed that the public obscenity law be amended to restrict depictions of nudity “in any place where the same can be seen from the public highway or in a public place frequented by children.”7 Reflecting the mores of the day and anticipating that passage of the amendment would garner broad social and political approval, the jury approved the amendment unanimously.

In the 1920s, nudity in art continued to be a controversial public issue, but most objections came from the conservative Midwest and the South rather than the east and west

5 Michael Kammen, Visual Shock: A History of Art Controversies in American Culture. (New York, NY: Knopf, 2006), xvi.

6 Kammen, 2006, 63.

7 Kammen, 65.

coasts of the United States.8 Full frontal nudity in Jacksonville or Florida or any other place in the South in public view would have been a violation of most notions and even laws about what passed for decency in the early decades of the twentieth century—in keeping with the conservative cultural values of many Southerners of the time.9

Kammen described Americans as having a vague but ever-present conflict between decency and indecency involving nudity and “conscious sensuality.”10 Major disputes in the arts have historically been driven by controversies symptomatic of social change, and the changing roles and expectations for art in a democratic society were typically accepted or rejected by the arbiters of public taste. Civic sculpture inspired by the great European collections was expected to provide the American public with images of the best aspects of the past and present culture. A core of educated citizens and trained sculptural artists was needed to teach connoisseurship to the common man—“the great unwashed in art.”11 In 1923, the spirit of American sculpture was expected to show a “moral earnestness” in civic art depicting the virtues of “American patriotism, commitment to high purpose, and duty as an expression of conscience.”12

The Rotary Club selection committee, a group of affluent business leaders in Jacksonville and consumers of “high culture,” 13 acted as arbiters of public taste for the city in 1917 when they chose a suitable memorial monument. Paul DiMaggio, in his study of the formation of high

8 James B. Crooks, Changing Face of Jacksonville, Florida: 1900-1910, Florida Historical Quarterly, 62, no. 4 (April 1984); James B. Crooks (author of Changing Face of Jacksonville, Florida: 1900-1910) e-mail message to the author, May 19, 2010.

9 Crooks, e-mail message to the author, May 19, 2010.

10 Kammen, 2006, 58.

11 Barr Ferree, “The Lesson of Sculpture,” Craftsman 7, no. 2 (November 1904): 122, quoted in Public Sculpture and the Civic Ideal: New York City 1890-1930 edited by Michelle Bogart. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).

12 Adeline Adams, The Spirit of American Sculpture. (New York, NY: The National Sculpture Society, 1929).

13 Paul DiMaggio, “Classification in Art,” American Sociological Review, 52, no. 4 (August 1987): 443.

culture in the United States, described domination of the arts by elites and noted that connoisseurship of high arts served as an important social status marker. The consumption of high culture by the social elite has, in fact, always been associated with status throughout the industrialized world. Jacksonville‟s civic leadership and other influential citizens struggled with inferiority in the perception of the city by larger, more cosmopolitan U.S. communities with headlines of “Jacksonville Not Far Behind in Art,”14 and Pillars, a classically trained artist practicing in Jacksonville, represented cultural sophistication for the community. Power and wealth for the city was centered in a relatively few members of the committee who wanted the city to be perceived as more sophisticated. Pillars‟s vision for the monument to the Great War was based on his artistic training and understanding of its purpose. And, while the importance of his personal vision cannot be denied, Pillars was forced to make concessions to criticism imposed by “the social matrix and cultural system that direct and often even inhibit the work of the artist.”15 Contrasting creative freedom and social control, those implicit forms of intentional social control act as explicit censorship.16 That is, when public monies underwrite the arts, the artist relinquishes personal vision. “Artists know what will be supported and what will not and

[they] tend to produce that which is approved.”17

For the commemorative monument, Pillars proposed to the committee a colossal allegorical memorial symbolically interpreted as a male nude figure. Sociologist Beth Eck observed that nude images are bounded by frames of art that give viewers cues that aid in its interpretation and evaluation. The social characteristics of the viewer and the subject of the

14 The Florida Times-Union, “Jacksonville Not Far Behind in Art Say Local Masters,” October 25, 1913.

15 John Manfredi, The Social Limits of Art. (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1982), 3.

16 Steven C. Dubin. “Artistic Production and Social Control,” Social Forces, 64, no. 3 (1986): 669.

17 Thomas G. Moore. The Economics of the American Theater. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1968), 126.

image are also important to interpretation. Eck declared that “context helps individuals decide whether a nude image is artistic, pornographic, or informational; acceptable or unacceptable; sacred or profane.”18 Certain contexts become part of our cultural and social experience. Opinion leaders—the cultural elite—de-eroticize what might be considered sexually suggestive, and for a nude public monument, respectability was granted with alterations by the opinion leaders of the

Jacksonville community, the Rotary Club committee. Pillars‟s male nude was reworked into an androgynous figure. A potentially scandalous public art work was made acceptable so that even little girls could attend and participate in the unveiling.

Artistic representations of the nude in the minds of the majority of Americans combined what was considered “functionlessness and indecency.”19 The late nineteenth century was the first real flowering of the nude as a theme in American painting and sculpture. Daniel Chester

French, who established the standard by which the Beaux-Arts school was understood in

America,20 was a master of nude allegorical representation and strove for a monumentality in figural art that had seldom been achieved in America until his time. Pillars emulated French‟s ideal nude and allegory in many of his own works: Kiss of Science (1918), Life (1926), The Arts:

Naked and Hungry (1934), and Neptune: Lure of the Sea (1937). Typically, his male figures began as a nude study as survives in studio images of Gen. Kirby-Smith (1918) and in recollection of the sittings for the life-size bronze portrait of William B. Barnett (1929).21 As the

18 Beth A. Eck. Nudity and Framing: Classifying Art, Pornography, Information, and Ambiguity. Sociological Forum, 16, no. 4 (2001): 604.

19 William H. Gerdts, The Great American Nude: A History in Art, 1974.

20 Sarah Gates and Timothy A. Eaton, From Neo-Classical and Beaux-Arts to Modernism. (West Palm Beach, FL: Eaton Fine Art), 6.

21Ann Pillars Durham recalled the family admonition that the Pillars children were restricted from the studio while Barnett Bank president, William B. Barnett, posed in the nude for his sculptor Pillars. Discussion with the author, August 13, 2010.

Beaux-Arts style lingered into the twentieth century, the allegorical nude style came to look increasingly outmoded.

Patronage Opportunities

Major disputes generated by art since the turn of the twentieth century or the classical

Beaux-Arts style falling out of fashion may have contributed to the decline in commissions of private and public art, but most certainly the economic crisis of 1929 sharply reduced spending money on something with only aesthetic value. A handbook in Pillars‟s personal collection, The

Spirit of American Sculpture, posed the question: “Will modernism last?”22 Its author, Adeline

Adams declared, “American sculpture has suffered little from the chicanery of modernism [and] is found in the boudoir; the boudoir is the transient asylum for novelties.” However, between the end of the Great Depression and before America‟s entry into WWII, mass circulation weeklies in the United States started giving more space to the avant garde artist and modern art.23

The avant garde of the art world were those artists that challenged accepted standards of established art forms. In the early twentieth century they were described as the early pioneers or innovators of modern art.24 The New York Armory Show of 1913 launched modern art in the

United States, where a collection of almost 2,000 pieces of modern European art hung for nearly a month. The Armory Show transported Americans out of the shortcomings of provincial taste

22 Adams, The Spirit of American Sculpture, 1929, 168.

23 Kammen, Visual Shock, 2006, viii.

24 Harold Osborne. "Avant-garde." In The Oxford Companion to Western Art, edited by Hugh Brigstocke. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/subscriber/article/opr/t118/e141 (accessed March 2, 2011).

and prompted public opinion to evaluate American painting and sculpture by a different standard.25

Eventually, America‟s aesthetic tastes did change. In the 1880s, most American painters, sculptors, and architects had gone to Europe for training at the École des Beaux-Arts, a preference more associated with European culture and known as the American Renaissance.26

America‟s wealthy elite saw themselves as the modern-day counterparts of European aristocracy and became patrons of the Continental style and cosmopolitan tastes. Following America‟s involvement in World War I, the old values and styles of art were increasingly questioned.

Debates about that war raised issues about attitudes toward war itself as well as the form and function of appropriate memorials.

The Beaux Arts style was eventually eclipsed by American Modernism. Open debate over the nature of the public sculptural monument and its relationship to contemporary artistic practice led to a noticeable shift in the way memory was commemorated. Sergiuz Michalski observed in America a disconnect in personal memory and public commemorative monuments as remembrance of the casualties of war. Pillars‟s bronze Life memorial was a community landmark for remembering the fallen in World War I, but commissions for such public monuments declined as the century progressed.27

25 Wayne Craven, American Art: History and Culture. (Madison, WI: Brown & Benchmark, 1994), 446-7; Sam Hunter and John Jacobus, Modern Art. (3rd Ed.). (New York: Prentice Hall and Harry N. Abrams, 1992), 251. 26 Harriet F. Senie and Sally Webster, Critical Issues in Public Art: Content, Context, and Controversy. (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), xii.

27 Sergiusz Michalski, Public Monuments: Art in Political Bondage; Catherine Moriarity, review of “The Material Culture of Great War Remembrance,” Journal of Contemporary History, 34, no. 4 (1999), 660.

Pillars’s Financial Strategies

Early in his career, while he was still a shop assistant, Pillars had learned Taft‟s strategy for building an income: Find a way to become a lecturer on sculpture to establish your name.28

Following that advice, when Pillars began his practice in Jacksonville, he opened a school and studio and began presenting art history lectures to social and civic groups.

In 1900, Jacksonville‟s population of 28,429 made it Florida‟s largest city, but despite its size, Pillars‟s widow recalled that when they came to Jacksonville, the people seemed to be “not terribly art conscious.”29 In fact, Pillars appeared to lack confidence in the cultural sophistication of the Jacksonville community when he felt the need to explain the symbolic interpretation of his allegorical nude in Life (p. 23). Most of the Jacksonville population had traditionally been blue collar, working for the railroad, at the shipyards, and in construction. At the turn of the century, however, Jacksonville was experiencing the beginnings of economic prosperity with construction in its downtown business center and in home development in upscale suburbs. The port and the railroad provided a hub for transporting goods to much of the state. Local banks provided most of the capital, and the new Independent Life and Gulf Life insurance companies prospered.

Sociologically, the city was still conservative and was part of the “Bible Belt,” supporting prohibition and a recent Florida law that prohibited the teaching of evolution in schools. There was no accredited college, and many conservative religious organizations dominated and contributed to the small town, closed atmosphere of this southern city.30

For middle and upper-class Jacksonville residents, these years were ones of prosperity.

The lives and the tastes of the newly prosperous business class were private and quite removed

28 Lewis Williams, Lorado Taft: American Sculptor and Art Missionary, 1958, 58.

29 Ann Dye, “Dream of Sculptor was Statue of Jackson,” Jacksonville Journal, May 31, 1960.

30 James B. Crooks, “Changing Face of Jacksonville, Florida: 1900-1910, 1984, 63.

from the blue collar workers in the community. The upper classes dominated the local economy and provided jobs. They led the Chamber of Commerce and the Woman‟s Club, and they would have supported the commissioning of a memorial statue for the community.31 Adhering to Taft‟s suggestion to develop a “notoriety and clientele,” Pillars, through the services offered by his art school (Figure 4-3), nurtured a social network with female leaders through the Woman‟s Club of

Jacksonville.32 the Springfield Improvement Association, the Daughters of the Confederacy, and the Daughters of the American Revolution. Pillars regularly delivered lectures to the Woman‟s

Club for meetings chaired by Mrs. Ninah Cummer and Mrs. Anna Louise Fletcher. Ninah

Cummer was married to Arthur G. Cummer, prominent local timber businessman and Rotarian,33 and Anna Louise Fletcher was the wife of United States Senator Duncan U. Fletcher. Later,

Pillars worked with Ninah and Arthur Cummer on the Life committee and developed a patron in

Senator Fletcher. The networks that developed resulted in introductions and portrait commissions of North Florida business leaders and their wives, prominent citizens who participated in social and civic organizations. They contracted with Pillars for works they donated as public monuments to the community. The Daughters of the Confederacy chose Pillars to create a monument of Confederacy President Jefferson Davis.”34 Through his connections with women‟s organizations, his commissions began in 1900.

In 1911, the Evening Metropolis announced the unveiling of a memorial tablet commissioned by the Martha Reid Chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy for the battleship Florida in memory of U.S. Senator William James Bryan. Bryan had been the

31 James B. Crooks, discussion with the author, May 19, 2010.

32 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, “Woman’s Club Yesterday,” n.d.

33 Jean Hall Dodd, Arthur Gerrish Cummer. Jacksonville, FL: Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, 1996.

34 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, October 25, 1913; Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, November 14, 1900.

youngest member of the senate at age 29, and in 1908, died of typhoid fever.35 The tablet was created by Pillars and was cast by the Tiffany Company of New York.36 Senator Bryan had been successful in having a warship named after the State of Florida. Pillars‟s memorial to the senator was in the shape of a shield, the upper part of which was formed in a medallion likeness of

Senator Bryan enclosed in a laurel wreath (Figure 4-4). The main body of the shield was engraved with a poem celebrating his public life.37 The memorial plaque was installed at a ceremony in Pensacola when the newly commissioned USS Battleship Florida (Figure 4-5) arrived in port.

In 1910, the Springfield Improvement Association commissioned Pillars to create a bronze fountain memorial to the organization‟s first president, Mrs. B. F. Dillon. Pillars‟s creation was a cherub, “the design [was] a copy of a famous fountain in the Palazzo Vecchio in

Florence, Italy, the work of Verrochio.”38

In 1924, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) contracted with Pillars to create a monument of international significance. On the occasion of the anniversary of the landing of the first Protestant on American soil in 1562, a committee of state and local members of the DAR commissioned Pillars to create a reproduction of the original stone marker placed by

French naval officer, Jean Ribault, and his lieutenant, Rene Goulaine de Laudonniere, on behalf of their party of French Huguenots.39 The location of the marker in East Mayport, which was

35 U. S. Senate. William James Bryan Memorial Address, Sixtieth Congress, First Session, Senate of the United States. (Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1908).

36Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, “Sculptor Appointed,” n.d.

37 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, 1911.

38 Florida Metropolis, “Erection in Memory of the Late Mrs. B. F. Dillon;” Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, “Bronze Fountain was Unveiled,” n.d.

39 Jacksonville Historical Society. “Mystery Photo of the Week.” http://jaxhistory.com/mystery-photo99c.html (accessed December 10, 2009).

destroyed by the Spanish in 1565, was on the approximate site Ribault had landed.40 On May 1,

1924, members of the Jacksonville Chapter of the DAR unveiled the commemorative marker.

The dedication of the Ribault stone was the first event in the national celebration of the tercentenary of the landing of the Walloons, Belgians, and French Huguenots in America. To observe this anniversary, a national Huguenot-Walloon New Netherlands commission was formed headed by President Calvin Coolidge, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, His

Majesty Albert, King of the Belgians; and President Alexandre Millerand of France. Only Queen

Wilhelmina declined the invitation. Among other distinguished citizens attending the ceremony was Col. W. Gaspard de Coligny, a lineal descendant of the French admiral who sent Ribault on the New World expedition. After much study of sixteenth century art, Pillars chose a model

(Figure 4-6) remarkably like the original which displayed the coat of arms of France, as drawn by Jacques LeMoyne de Morgues (Figure 4-7), an artist and writer who was with Ribault when he landed at “Mai Porte.41 The National Park Service has included Pillars‟s Ribault monument as part of the Fort Caroline National Memorial complex in Jacksonville.42

Public Commissions and Competitions

By 1900, Pillars had earned such a reputation that he had an automatic berth in significant public art competitions. An equestrian bronze of Jacksonville‟s namesake, U.S. President

Andrew Jackson, had always been a goal of Pillars,43 and, at the time of his death, his studio

40 When the U. S. Naval Station Mayport was established in 1941, the monument became inaccessible to the public and was moved. Following three additional moves, the monument was permanently placed on St. Johns Bluff and became part of the Fort Caroline National Memorial (http://www.jaxhistory.com/mystery-photo99c.html (accessed December 10, 2009). Pillars‟s original base for the monument is still located on the property of NAS Mayport (Ann Pillars Durham, discussion with the author, November 15, 2009); Charles E. Bennett, Laudonniere & Fort Caroline. (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 1964). 41 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, May 1, 1924.

42 M. Nyenhuis, “St. Johns Bluff Apt to be High Point of Day,” Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, 1987.

43 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, 1928; Ann Dye, “Dream of Sculptor Was Statue of Jackson,” May 31, 1960.

inventory included the preliminary nude stage of an equestrian model (Figure 4-8). Following the huge, if local, success of his Life bronze in 1924, Pillars promoted to the community that a collective effort should be made to erect a memorial to General Andrew Jackson at the terminal station “where it would be viewed by thousands of people each day.” Pillars suggested that he would need five years and $75,000 to produce such a piece of public art.” 44 In 1926, he began courting the Florida Historical Society for the sponsorship of a public monument to Jackson. A letter from the secretary of the society, Francis M. Williams, read, “Your valued letter . . . was received and presented at a special meeting called for the purpose. . . . The Committee heard your letter read . . . and directed me to say that so far as the Society was concerned, when the time came to place the order for the statue, you would have no rival.”45 The letter closed with a request for Pillars to prepare an equestrian model for exhibition in Jacksonville as soon as possible. In 1930, Pillars enlisted his former patron, U.S. Senator Duncan U. Fletcher, to assist him with securing the award of the public art monument of Andrew Jackson for the City of

Jacksonville. Senator Fletcher responded, “I spoke to Mr. Williams, Mrs. Corse, Mayor Alsop, and several other people about you and the Jackson memorial or monument.”46 However, the monument was never commissioned for Pillars.

44 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, 1928. Note: Pillars backed his suggestion and included with his letter to the newspaper a copy of the news story from Chicago visitors to the city praising the Life bronze memorial and their opinion that the statue would win national acclaim for the city.

45 Letter to Mr. C. Adrian Pillars from Francis M. Williams, Secretary, the Florida Historical Society, July 9, 1926. Copy in Pillars family archives.

46 Letter to Mr. C. Adrian Pillars from United States Senator Duncan U. Fletcher, December 2, 1930. Copy in Pillars family archives.

When Senator Fletcher died in 1936, Pillars anticipated the award of a $12,500 governmental contract for a state memorial to the statesman that had come up for vote in the

Florida Senate. The proposed bronze memorial was never authorized.47

Public Assistance for Artists

In the mid-1920s, the American economy was functioning on borrowed time. In Florida, economic depression had set in by 1926.48 In 1924 and again in 1927, the Federal Reserve greatly inflated the money supply, which, as it percolated through the economy, provided a boost to both land prices and stock market shares. This inflationary policy led to risky speculation by some bankers that resulted in the closing of 117 banks in Georgia and Florida during July of

1927. The South was in an almost unimaginable crisis of poverty, a condition accompanied by something approaching social and political despair.49 In the first months of 1933, the primary breadwinner in one of every five families in Florida was unemployed and on relief.50

When President Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in 1932, extreme poverty and economic depression in both the rural and urban South caused him to focus federal relief efforts on the region. Viewing the economic disaster around them, Southerners welcomed the legislation of Roosevelt‟s New Deal programs that provided for the distribution of great sums of money to millions of farmers and unemployed workers. Among the federal programs launched were those for regional planning, foreclosure prevention for homes and farms, public works projects, deposit insurance protection of small bank accounts, and federal regulations of Wall Street. The New

47 An equestrian monument of Andrew Jackson was finally erected in Jacksonville in 1987.

48 Charlton W. Tebeau and William Marina, History of Florida, 3rd Ed. (Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press, 1999).

49 Monroe L. Billington, Political South in the Twentieth Century. (New York, NY: Charles Scribner‟s Sons, 1975).

50 G. W. Bush, “Sun-Bound Highways: The Growth of Florida as an Independent State, 1917-1940 quoted in Paul S. George, ed., A Guide to the History of Florida. (New York, NY: Greenwood Press, 1989). 107.

Deal, to the extent that it meant concern of government for the welfare of the victims of depression, began at the national level and in Florida in 1932.51

In a study of historic resources during the New Deal, Johnston noted the numerous organizations created to support Americans during this time. Each agency was specifically tasked to carry out separate programs to construct buildings, conserve natural resources, establish recreation facilities, and improve infrastructure. Nearly two dozen “alphabet” agencies became known to millions of Americans by their familiar initials, including the Civilian Conservation

Corps (CCC), Civil Works Administration (CWA), Federal Art Project (FAP), Federal Housing

Administration (FHA), Federal Writers‟ Project (FWP), National Recovery Administration

(NRA), Public Works Administration (PWA), Resettlement Administration (RA), Rural

Electrification Administration (REA), Works Progress Administration (WPA), and U.S. Housing

Authority (USHA).52 Jacksonville, the state‟s largest city, was designated as the state headquarters for the WPA and other New Deal agencies.53 In 1933, the U.S. Treasury

Department received a grant from the CWA which became the Public Works of Art Project, providing work to 3,600 artists in the 48 states to create murals and sculptures for public buildings. The CWA was terminated and in 1935 the WPA established Federal Project No. 1 to give artistic and professional work to the unemployed who qualified. The Federal Art Project began as a part of Federal One with Holger Cahill as its director. 54

51 Charlton Tebeau and William Marina, History of Florida, 1999.

52 Sidney Johnston, “Florida‟s New Deal Historic Resources,” 2005.

53 Stetson Kennedy, 1999. “Portraits of Our Past: An Essay by Stetson Kennedy,” http://www.jacksovnille.com/tu- online/stories/022199/cel_1p1kenne.html (accessed April 23, 2009).

54 Margaret Bing, “A Brief Overview of the EPA,” Bienes Center for the Literary Arts, Broward County (Florida) Library. http://www.co.broward.fl.us/library/bienes/lii10204.htm (accessed April 23, 2009). Richard D. KcKinzie. The New Deal for Artists. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973), xi.

For the state of Florida, what was originally known as the Federal Art Project became the

Florida Art Project.55 Florida had the “most ambitious” art centers of any state.56 Each had an infrastructure of its own, and the artworks produced were associated with the available artists in each region using their individual specialties in expertise and leadership. Under the direction of state director, Eva Alsman Fuller, Florida art centers were the exception and were expanded from the federal quota of 25 and increased statewide to 120.57

In their history of its cultural programs, Adams and Goldbard report that while criticized by some, the New Deal provided the “first direct investment and public support by the U.S. government in cultural development.”58 Erica Beckh described that “the New Deal put many unemployed artists back to work.”59 As a result, private commissions for Pillars, as for other artists, had dried up. American bronze foundries had flourished until the beginning of World War

I when all fine-art casting was temporarily stopped because metal was needed for the war effort.

That interruption marked a long and steep decline to the American bronze casting industry.60 An awareness of the plight of artists during the economic downturn and the need for the federal

55 Edgar H. Cahill, 1942a, “Series 3: Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project: Administration of the State WPA/FAP, Florida. Report on the History of the FAP in Florida, 1942. (Reel 5289, Frames 0651-0658.” http://www.aaa.si.edu/collectionsonline/cahiholg/container18394.htm. (accessed April 17, 2009); William F. McDonald, Federal Relief Administration and the Arts, 1969.

56 McDonald, Federal Relief Administration and the Arts, 1969, 395

57 Ibid, 372.

58 Don Adams and Arlene Goldbard, “New Deal Cultural Programs: Experiments in Cultural Democracy” http://www.wwcd.org/policy/US/newdeal.html (accessed August 21, 2008).

59 Erica Beckh. 1960. “Government Art in the Roosevelt Era: An Appraisal of Federal Art.” Patronage in the Light of Present Needs.” Art Journal, 20, no. 1 (1960): 2.

60 Michelle Bogart, Public Sculpture and the Civic Ideal,1989.

government to subsidize art activities was a major impetus for the initiation of the Federal Art

Project.61

Statewide advisory committees served the project and were headed by leaders in the regional communities, with most supervisors of the program in Florida outstanding artists and civic leaders in the state. Membership included prominent educators, directors of art departments of universities and colleges, community volunteers, civic groups, and prominent business and professional men and woman.62. In her report to the WPA, director Fuller noted that the officers of the Jacksonville Civic Art Institute were “notable local business and civic leaders at the time.”63 Bion H. Barnett, Jr., president of the Barnett Bank, one of the three largest banks in

Florida at the time, served as president of the WPA Jacksonville Civic Art Institute. Barnett encouraged bank officers to hold leadership positions in community organizations, and the bank responded generously to charitable agencies in Jacksonville and elsewhere in the state. As the

Great Depression deepened, Barnett continued to be a major benefactor in his commitment to the local WPA Art Institute64 and remained a supportive patron of Pillars.

Pillars had developed a patronage with the Barnetts in 1900 and had created portrait medallions of chairman of the board Bion Barnett, his sons, and his father. In 1931, as the economy worsened, at Bion Barnett‟s urging, a committee of the bank‟s board of directors led by

61 William F. McDonald, Federal Relief Administration and the Arts. (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1969), 372.

62 Edgar H. Cahill, 1942b, “Series 3: Works Progress Administration,” 5.

63 Edgar H. Cahill, 1942c, “Series 3: Works Progress Administration.”

64 David J. Ginzl, Barnett: The Story of Florida’s Bank. (Tampa, FL: University of Tampa Press, 2001).

Arthur G. Cummer, commissioned Pillars to create a bronze life-size portrait of founder, William

B. Barnett (Figure 4-9).65

Pillars had known Florida Arts Projector director, Eve Alsman when he was on the faculty at Ringling, and that professional collaboration with her assisted him in weathering the national employment collapse of the Depression. In 1936, Ringling School of Art was forced to cut back staff, and at the conclusion of Pillars‟s teaching assignment there, he and his family returned to Jacksonville. Together they worked on at least three publicly funded arts relief programs. In July and August of 1932, Pillars served with Alsman on a judging panel for a

Florida mural to be exhibited at the state exhibition at the Century of Progress World‟s Fair in

1933.66 In 1934, while participating in the Florida Emergency Relief Administration‟s statewide art project with Alsman, Pillars created an emblem for the Florida Federation of Art.67

Beginning in 1936, Pillars was a volunteer teacher on the staff of the Jacksonville Federal

Art Gallery and member of the Jacksonville Art Association. Subsequently, he was appointed director of the Duval County Sculpture Project (Figure 4-10) for the Federal Art Project (FAP),

Works Progress Administration. Eve Alsman served as the Florida state director of the FAP.68

In June of that year, Pillars died, and Alsman commented that in losing Pillars, the

Federal Arts Project had lost its finest sculptor and one of its more sincere, steadfast friends. His service to the federal government program had been “a genuine contribution to Florida‟s artistic record.”69

65 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, 1929.

66 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, 1932.

67 September 7, 1934.

68 Edgar H. Cahill, 1942a, “Series 3: Works Progress Administration.”

69 circa 1937.

Pillars‟s final sculptural project was an unfinished statue of Neptune for Jacksonville

Beach, a colossal nude allegorical figure to typify the power of the sea. The $25,000 work was a portion of the program outlined by the FAP Sculpture Project. The 17-foot Neptune statue would be placed on the ramp at the Neptune runway to the beach. Using his teenage son as a studio model, Pillars created Neptune rising on a huge wave (Figure 4-11). Pillars‟s full-size model required 14,000 pounds of clay.70

A companion piece to the Neptune statue, also designed by Pillars, was to be called the

“Lure of the Sea.” The Neptune figure was to represent the power of the sea, and the Lure of the

Sea represented its beauty. A beauty competition was announced to seek out the principal figure for the piece, and Pillars invited registrations at the Jacksonville Federal Art Gallery. The

Jacksonville Beaches underwrote the cost of these two pieces of sculpture with the expectation that publicity attending their presentation would receive nationwide attention and a boost to tourism for the communities.71 However, upon Pillars‟s death, the sculptural project, beauty contest, and publicity campaign were abandoned.

Professional Recognition of Pillars

In 1936, months before his death in June of 1937, Pillars was awarded a life membership by the Fine Arts Society of Jacksonville “for the honor and fame [he has] brought to our state and city.”72 Pillars had been included in Who’s Who in America Since 1918 and The National

70, May 30, 1937.

71 Ibid.

72 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, 1936.

Cyclopaedia of American Biography.73 Biographical information about Pillars is also a prominent feature of the St. Augustine Historical Society and the Jacksonville Historical Society.

The Charles Adrian Pillars Sculpture Award established at the St. Augustine Art Association is annually given by the current owner of Homwald, Mrs. Jeanne Kravitz. In 1966, to honor and recognize his talent and leadership as a sculptor, the Memorial Art Society of Charles Adrian

Pillars, Sculptor, was formed in Jacksonville.

Upon his return to Jacksonville from the faculty position at Ringling School of Art in

Sarasota, he was celebrated by the local Florida Times-Union. Pillars was heralded as an

“internationally known sculptor and the designer of the Life group in Memorial Park, a work that has attracted the attention of visitors and local citizens perhaps more than any other local setting.”74

73 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, “Death Takes C. Adrian Pillars,” and “Widely Noted Sculptor Dies at Jax Home,” June 22, 1937; Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, “Rites Held for Noted Sculptor,” and Final Honors Paid to Pillars,” June 23, 1937.

74 Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, “Florida Sculptor of Great Renown,” n.d.

Figure 4-1. Southern Telephone News October 1926, Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph Company, 1926. (Image in public domain).

Figure 4-2. Pat Barwald, “After 5 Years It Is Learned Who Posed for Classic Greek Statue in Memorial Park Here,” Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, 1929. (Image in public domain). Reprinted with permission of Jacksonville Florida Times-Union.

A Figure 4-3. Pillars Art School information flier, 1909. Jacksonville, Florida. (In private collection). A) Cover Page. B) Tuition Statement. C) School calendar and faculty of Pillars Art School.

B Figure 4-3. Continued.

C Figure 4-3. Continued.

Figure 4-4. Charles Adrian Pillars, William James Bryan Memorial Tablet, 1911, 5 feet. Bronze, USS Battleship Florida. (Now destroyed). (Photo in private collection).

Figure 4-5. USS Battleship Florida, c. 1911, demolished 1931. U.S. Navy History. (Photo in public domain). Retrieved on December 9, 2009, from http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/sh-usn/usnsh-f/bb30.htm

Figure 4-6. Charles Adrian Pillars, Jean Ribault Monument, May 1, 1924. Marble and bronze. Fort Caroline National Park, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, Jacksonville, Florida. From Official Program, Ribault Quadricentennial Celebration 1562-1962. Reprinted with permission of Jacksonville Historical Society.

Figure 4-7. Jacques LeMoyne, Althore showing Laudonniere the marker column installed by Jean Ribault at Fort Caroline, 1564. (Bennett, Laudonniere & Fort Caroline, Frontispiece).

Figure 4-8. Charles Adrian Pillars, Unnamed equestrian model, n.d. (Photo, private collection).

Figure 4-9. Charles Adrian Pillars. William B. Barnett, 1931. Bronze. Bank of American Corporate Office, Jacksonville, Florida. (Photo, private collection).

Figure 4-10. Jacksonville Art Institute. The Federal Arts Project, 1935. Charles Adrian Pillars, director, at right. (Photo, private collection).

Figure 4-11. Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, “Huge Statue of Neptune To Be Erected on Runway at Beach,” May 30, 1937. “This composite picture, with Mr. Pillars in the foreground, shows how the statue will appear when finished.” Reprinted with permission of Jacksonville Florida Times-Union.

CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION: LIFE RISING TRIUMPHANT FROM THE SWIRL OF CHAOS AND FACING THE FUTURE COURAGEOUSLY

Although Pillars enjoyed artistic recognition and financial success until the Great

Depression, the waning popularity of the Beaux Arts style that he preferred hastened the decline of his career. Pillars is rarely credited for his lifetime of sculptural works, and he does not readily appear in the archives of collective memory, even of art historians. Why are his name and the accomplishments upon which his reputation rests not more widely remembered? The manner in which his renown faded over subsequent generations mirrored that of many who depended upon patrons, public taste, and government programs to continue be able to continue their art.

Pillars‟s personal success in Jacksonville reached its apex with his memorial to World

War I dead, his most renowned work, the figure of an allegorical male nude entitled Life

Triumphant (1924). Ironically, that most celebrated piece was in the same style of his final work,

Neptune, another colossal Beaux Arts style male nude. By the 1930s, the Beaux Arts style had been eclipsed by modernism, and Pillars‟s work must have been viewed as outdated and even quaint. The public arts projects of the New Deal reflected a renewed interest in national values and traditions of American thought with a commitment to create and document American culture.1 In 1937, the WPA art administration policy for Illinois was, “No nudes is good nudes for the purposes of [a] WPA art project.”2 As a proposed Florida Arts Project proposal, Pillars‟s nude, allegorical Neptune with phallic ocean wave would likely have been rejected.

1 Jane De Hart Mathews, Arts and the People: The New Deal Quest for a Cultural Democracy. The Journal of American History, 62, no. 2, September 1975: 325. Richard D. McKinzie. The New Deal for Artists. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973), xi.

2 Fortune, “Unemployed Arts,” (May 1937): 114. Quoted in Steven C. Dubin, “Artistic Production and Social Control,” Social Forces, 64, no. 3, 1986: 675.

Among his peers, Pillars was recognized as achieving “unusual success and distinction in his profession”3 and was included in exclusive professional art listings.4 Upon his return to

Jacksonville from the faculty position at Ringling School of Art in Sarasota, a Florida Times-

Union article had celebrated his presence again in the city and recognized the distinction of his being recognized as one of two Americans in the International Blue Book and one of the three greatest sculptors in America.5 He was also heralded as an “internationally known sculptor and the designer of the Spiritualized Life group in Jacksonville‟s Riverside Memorial Park, a work that has attracted the attention of visitors and local citizens perhaps more than any other local setting.”6 Ironically, this, his crowning work, was unsigned.

Reputation: Recognition, and Renown

Since its dedication in 1924, Life has become a Jacksonville landmark (Figure 5-1) but its sculptor is seldom remembered.7 Why are some artists and their accomplishments more widely regarded? A study by Gladys Engel Lang and Kurt Lang examined specifically what combination of elements preserves for posterity the names of artists well regarded in their

3 The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography. Vol 34, New York: James T. White & Company. (1948): 188- 9.

4 Peter Hastings Falk, ed., Who Was Who in American Art, 1564-1975: 400 Years of Artists in America. Vol. III, Madison, CT: Sound View Press, 1999, 2611; Albert Nelson Marquis, ed., Who’s Who in America: A Comprehensive Volume of Who’s Who in American History. Vol. I, 1897-1942, Chicago: Marquis Publications (1968), 974; Homer E. Moyer, ed., Who’s Who and What To See in Florida: A Standard Biographical Reference Book of Florida. St. Petersburg, FL: Current Historical Company of Florida (1935): 212-213; Glenn B. Opitz, ed., Dictionary of American Sculptors: 18th Century to the Present, (Poughkeepsie, NY: Apollo, 1984), 315.

5 The other two sculptors were not named, and Pillars is not listed in either the 1926 or 1939 editions of the International Blue Book. Hyacinthe Ringrose, International Blue Book, London, New York: Hyacinthe Ringrose, 1926, 1939.

6 Rantoul Press and Chanute Field News, April 5, 1934; The Florida Times-Union, June 22, 1937.

7 Ann Dye, “Dream of Sculptor Was Statue of Jackson” May 31, 1960; George Harmon, “Friends of Memorial Park Seek To Restore Area to Original Splendor,” November 1, 1987.

lifetimes for work in a genre that has gone out of fashion.8 They suggest that their findings in the taste cycle of modern etching can be extended to the other arts and to other areas of achievement.

They argue that what an artist does in a lifetime to facilitate the survival and future identification of his oeuvre is critical in determining whether, and how well, his name will be known to posterity.9

Successful American sculptors at the end of the nineteenth century were either trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris or learned from those who were.10 Pillars was both a marmorean11 and a bronzist: that is, he worked easily in both carving marble and casting works in bronze. Pillars‟s ability to create precise and evocative interpretations in clay and his knowledge of how these effects would be reproduced in bronze reflected an advanced skill for any American sculptor. French sociologist, anthropologist, and philosopher Pierre Bourdieu simplified the phenomenon of artistic success as cultural recognition accorded by a peer group in a specific artistic field,12 that is, artists depend upon the judgment of other artists for their self- image. The artist‟s peers are also his competition. When those contemporaries confer marks of distinction in a specialty, a manner, a style to a sculptor, he is recognized as a candidate for recognition. The question is whether an artist enjoys a reputation as a master in the field after his or her working life is over.

8 Gladys Engel Lang and Kurt Lang, “Recognition and Renown: The Survival of Artistic Reputation,” American Journal of Sociology, 94, no. 1 (Jul 1988): 80.

9Gladys Engel Lang and Kurt Lang, “Recognition and Renown,” 1988, 86 . 10 Donald M. Reynolds, Masters of American Sculpture: The Figurative Tradition from the American Renaissance to the Millennium, 1993.

11 From Latin marmoreus, from marmor, marble.

12 Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature, ed. Randal Johnson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 115-116.

Each age has its own kind of art, and while masterpieces are rare, they are possible in every period. Meyer Schapiro pointed out that the new decorative forms of modern art have not replaced the old.13 The symbolic values of the older styles as signs of rank, culture, and heritage still have a powerful hold. The art student‟s training continues, and drawing from live nude figures continues in art schools, in drawing and painting from careful observation of the model, and in the copying of works of the old masters.14 Reverence for the excellence of old art remains.

Achievements alone do not make an artist famous. However, survival in the collective memory of art history may be analyzed by two aspects of reputation: recognition and renown.15

As American sociologist Howard Becker defined it, recognition refers to the esteem in which one is held by his or her peers.”16 Measures such as election to art societies, acceptance of works to juried exhibitions, and awards are representative of evaluations of artistic output by an artist‟s professional contemporaries and connoisseurs of art, although Pillars was never a member of the

United States National Sculpture Society.17 Renown is sometimes measured by how well a person is known outside a specific art world and depends upon the publicity provided by cultural consumers, the critical press, and transactions.

No publicly visible traces of his activity as a sculptor are listed in art gallery databases.18

Museum and historical society curators and experts, however, recognize and associate his name

13 Meyer Schapiro. Modern Art: 19th and 20th Centuries, 1982, 172.

14 Kenneth M. Clark, The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form. (New York, NY: Random House, 1956), 195; Donald M. Reynolds, Masters of American Sculpture: The Figurative Tradition from the American Renaissance to the Millenium. (New York, NY: Abbeville Press, 1993), 13.

15 Gladys Engel Lang and Kurt Lang, “Recognition and Renown: The Survival of Artistic Reputation” 1988, 84.

16 Howard S. Becker, Art Worlds. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982).

17 Elizabeth Helms, National Sculpture Society, e-mail message to the author, December 5, 2007.

18 Websites www.artnet.com and www.askart.com ( accessed on February 4, 2011).

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with the memorial19 and the effect of his life and work upon the city of Jacksonville and the artistic community of St. Augustine.20 Visibility, the visibility that defines renown, enables a momentum that allows the artist personal success and prosperity in the public gaze. Stories about artists and their work featured in newspaper articles and advertisement of artworks for sale and those commissioned by local connoisseurs fuel interest in their works. After their deaths, archivists may promote the value of their achievements and promote acquiring artworks in the marketplace. Pillars‟s works, however. have yet to sell at any major auction house.21

Pillars‟s lifetime of works lacks visibility, a factor that is crucial to preservation of an artist‟s reputation. Before Life, Pillars was best remembered for both Florida statues in Statuary

Hall of the U.S. Capitol,22 two examples of his artistic skill lost among many in a forest of bronze and marble.

Pillars‟s bronze fountain, the Cherub memorial of 1910, was the target of vandalism in the 1940s and scheduled for meltdown for bronze to support the U.S. war effort. It was stored away in a city tool shed until 1960.23 Today the life-sized bronze of bank founder, William B.

Barnett, created by Pillars in 1929 is in a storage facility of the current banking entity that

19 Sharon Laird, archivist; Emily Lisska, Executive Director, Jacksonville Historical Society; Helen Euston, library volunteer, Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens., discussions with the author.

20 Enzo Torcoletti, former Director of Sculpture, Flagler College, St. Augustine, Florida. Discussion with the author, May 12, 2010. Note: the Jacksonville nonprofit organization, Riverside Avondale Preservation Association (RAP), employs an image of Pillars‟s Life (1924) as its logo and, another Jacksonville nonprofit agency, Springfield Women‟s Club, uses an image of Pillars‟s Cherub (1910) located in Klutho Park on its organizational letterhead.

21 In researching past auction records for artists, neither, Christie‟s nor Sotheby‟s report the appearance of Pillars‟s works. Margot Chvatal, Specialist, American Art, Christie‟s,e-mail message to the author, October 2, 2010; Elizabeth Thomas, Specialist, American Art and Sculpture, Sotheby‟s, e-mail message to the author, October 21, 2010,

22 The Architect of the Capitol, “The National Statuary Hall Collection, http://www.aoc.gov/cc/art/nsh/index.cfm (accessed June 13, 2007).

23 The Florida Times-Union, March 15, 1960; The Florida Times-Union, February 25, 1968; John Carter, “Cherub Comes Home to Springfield,” The Florida Times-Union, October 25, 2006, 3. Today the Cherub is used as the logo of the Springfield Women‟s Club letterhead, but the club website does not acknowledge the design as Pillars‟s work.

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acquired Barnett Banks of Florida.24 The urn that Pillars designed as a campus memorial to the son of Southern College president, Dr. Ludd Spivey, is “temporarily in storage awaiting a new, appropriate site.”25 Following his death, the only example of Pillars‟s works retained by his widow was a plaster of Paris bust of herself that her husband created in 1904.26 His estate inventory of small clay and plasteline models in his studio was destroyed by a family member.

Lang and Lang have both cautioned that the durability of reputation is dependent upon four directions the artist must take for survival: Artists themselves must make efforts in their own lifetimes to protect their reputations. Following that, the overriding need is to appoint someone who has a stake in preserving their artistic output and reputations. While they are still living they must also develop links to political networks that facilitate entry into the cultural archives and generate interest from art historians.

Pillars failed in his lifetime to take those steps to assure his reputation.27 Chances for survival of recognition are increased when an artist keeps a record that assists in future identification of his work.28 While his wife maintained a scrapbook of newspaper clippings and a few photographs, there are no extant letters, contracts, or journal entries he kept. The records and minutes of the Citizens Memorial Committee effort that raised $60,000 and contracted with

Pillars to create the Life memorial were not archived.29

24 Martha Barrett, Director of Public Relations, Bank of America, discussion with the author, November 28, 2007.

25 Myrtice Young, APR, Director of Development, Florida Southern College, e-mail message to the author, September 30, 2009.

26 Ann Dye, “Dream of Sculptor Was Statue of Jackson,” Jacksonville Journal, May 31, 1960.

27 Gladys Engel Lang and Kurt Lang, “Recognition and Renown: The Survival of Artistic Reputation” Howard S. Becker, Art Worlds, (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1982, 2008).

28 Ibid., 88.

29 Miriam Funchess, Executive Secretary, Rotary Club of Jacksonville, discussion with the author August 19, 2010.

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Pillars did produce a critical mass of works but his archives lacked a trail of provenance for a researcher to follow. When there was little demand for his art during the Great Depression,

Pillars survived because of the Federal Arts Project and the referrals generated by his colleague,

Eve Alsman, the director of the WPA agency for Florida. The impact made by the five major cultural projects of the WPA during the Great Depression upon the national consciousness was profound. “Few living artists [in 1960] did not do something or other for at least one of the government art agencies of the New Deal” or abandon their arts career and transition into another profession.30 Pillars‟s faculty associate at Ringling School of Art, Anton Schutz, devastated by the economic downtown of the 1930s, reinvented his career as an etcher and became a successful publisher of high-quality reproductions.31

In developing a social network of clientele, Pillars moved among the cultural elite and business leaders of Jacksonville at the turn of the twentieth century and up until his last work with the Federal Arts Project. Pillars captured the images of famous people, leaders of

Jacksonville and their families; rediscovery of those portraits would be symbolic markers for historians and curators that would add to his visibility and renown. Donation from family members of their collection of Pillars‟s personal papers and photographs to a local historical association or library archives could provide public access to his life story. This thesis research on Pillars has prompted a book collaboration to further research the artist by the author and Dr.

Wayne Wood, noted Jacksonville historian, to be published by the Jacksonville Historical

Society.32

30 Erica Beckh, “Government Art In the Roosevelt Era: An Appraisal of Federal Art Patronage in the Light of Present Needs,” Art Journal, 20, no. 1 (1960), 5.

31 Lang and Lang, 1988, 88.

32 Dr. Wayne Wood, e-mail message to the author, February 4, 2011.

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Symbolic association can generate national renown for a region‟s most conspicuous contributor to the arts and can celebrate his contributions. Museums in both Jacksonville and St.

Augustine have the opportunity to promote themselves in “rediscovering” their local artist of renown. The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens is located in close proximity to Pillars‟s Life in

Riverside Memorial Park, and his home and studio, Homwald, is a stop on the historical tour of

St. Augustine, Florida.33

Jacksonville’s Most Noted Sculptor, Reclaimed

The impetus for this study was as a topic for a thesis but also interest in the resurrection and preservation of Pillars‟s recognition and renown. The legacy of Pillars‟s artworks is powerful. He was a gifted artist; his sculptural works are aesthetically significant and worthy of renown. Pillars‟s artworks can assist us to better understand the critical beginnings of the city of

Jacksonville in the twentieth century. Pillars‟s portraits of leaders in early Jacksonville provide the physical appearance of his clients that allow us to develop biographies and reassemble the historical dynamics of their lives. While he has not been acknowledged, his portraits reveal much information about the operation of society for an artist and what it was to negotiate cultural demands. We can reassess through the artist the regional biases of working in the South, satisfying conventional taste, and the issues of negotiating masculinity in public art.

Although this thesis is a small first step, shared interests among those who value public art and sculpture will be needed to maintain the effort to keep his name and work alive. His artistic achievements will be preserved if there are those willing to act as links to networks that may bring his work into museums. Additional research may unearth more material and existing works that can contribute to the archives. Bringing to the fore more knowledge about the man

33 David Nolan, Houses of St. Augustine, 1995.

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and his reputation through public viewing could both reconstruct and preserve his reputation, one that rests primarily on what may be considered his greatest and surely most enduring work: Life.

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Figure 5-1. War Memorial Park, Jacksonville, Florida, c. 1940, Postcard (in collection of the author, Dianne Crum Dawood).

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APPENDIX A PILLARS‟S SURVIVING STUDIO PIECES, C. 1937

1. Neptune, c. 1937, male figure with trident held aloft, 24 inches, Plasteline.

2. Awakening: River Mai (Welaka), c. 1930, female upright figure, 17 inches, Plasteline.

3. Young Dreams, female figure, semi-recumbent, 7 inches, Plasteline.

4. Diana, female figure rising from the moon, 22 inches Plasteline.

5. Falling Leaves, 1934, female figure reclining by tree trunk, 16 inches, Plasteline.

6. Pensive Thoughts, female figure seated, 14.5 inches, Plasteline.

7. Weariness, female figure seated with hands behind head, 15 inches, Plasteline.

8. Young Girl, female figure standing, 20 inches, Plasteline.

9. Bust of Ruth, small portrait bust of woman, 7 inches, Plasteline.

10. Equestrian Study of Gen. Andrew Jackson, Equestrian study, 20 inches, Plasteline.

11. Solitude, c. 1931, female figure standing with bent head, 13 inches, Plasteline. On reverse, “Sketch model for fountain and bird bath.” 12. Winged Victory on Globe of World, male figure of “victory” above figures on globe, 28 inches, plaster of Paris.

13. The Wave, c. 1937. female figure engulfed in wave, 7.5 inches, plaster of Paris.

14. The Victor, male head, 11 inches, plaster of Paris.

15. Wind Goddess, large female bust, no dimension.

16. The Storm, male head in high relief with beard and long hair (in plaque), no dimension.

17. Bubbles, female nude reclining and holding a ball, no dimension, Ivory soap.1

18. Crouching Girl, female in bathing costume (?), no dimension, Plasteline.

1 Pillars‟s carved Bubbles from a bar of Ivory soap as part of a competition sponsored by the soap company. Ann Pillars Durham (Pillars‟s daughter), conversation with the author, August 13, 2010.

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A B

C D

E F

Figure A-1. Images of surviving studio models c. 1937. A) Neptune, c. 1937. B) Awakening: River Mai (Welaka), c. 1930. C) Young Girl, n.d. D) Falling Leaves, c. 1934. E) Bubbles, n.d. F) Crouching Girl, n.d.

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A B C

D E

Figure A-2. Unnamed surviving figures c.1937.

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APPENDIX B CHARLES ADRIAN PILLARS “OPUS LIST”

1. Mark Carley, c. 1887, clay. Arcola, Illinois. Location unknown.

2. London Lady.

3. Genius of the Swamp.

4. Southern Womanhood.

5. The Spirit of the Woods.

6. Fountain of Youth, Dreams.

7. Landing of Ponce de Leon.

8. The Storm.

9. The Wind Goddess.

10. Solitude.

11. The Awakening of the River.

12. Kiss of the South Wind.

13. Love of the Lily.

14. The Vampire.

15. Fountain of Unity.

16. Parting of David and Jonathan.

17. Deer Hunt.

18. Opossum Hunt.

19. The Fallen Leaf.

20. History of Architecture, c. 1884. Doors (three) from the Leland Sanford Junior Museum. Bronze. Palo Alto, California.

21. Dancing Faun, 1893. Plaster staff. Horticultural Building, World‟s Columbian Exposition of 1893, Chicago, Illinois. Location unknown.

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22. Charles Adrian Pillars with Daniel Chester French, Republic, head and bust, 1893, 60 feet. Plaster staff. World‟s Columbian Exposition of 1893, Chicago, Illinois. (Now lost).

23. Charles Adrian Pillars with Daniel Chester French and E. C. Potter, Columbus Quadriga, four horses and one herald rider of the placement, 1893. Plaster staff. World‟s Columbian Exposition of 1893, Chicago, Illinois. (Now lost).

24. Robin Hood.

25. Columbus Frieze, 1893. Model of eleven scenes in the life of Columbus for bronze. Columbus Memorial Building, Chicago, Illinois. Location unknown.

26. Colonel J.J. Daniel, 1894, portrait bust. Location unknown.

27. Dr. A.S. Baldwin, 1899, “life size bust.” Location unknown. Philip Henry Sheridan Equestrian Monument, c. 1900. Competition model for installation in Chicago, Illinois. Location unknown.

28. Nathan Bedford Forrest Equestrian Monument, c. 1900. Competition model for installation in Memphis, Tennessee. Location unknown.

29. Jefferson Davis Monument, 1900. Model of a monumental arch in Richmond, Virginia, for Daughters of the Confederacy, Jacksonville, Florida. (Location unknown).

30. William B. Barnett, 1900., “half life size,” portrait medallion, Bronze. Location unknown.

31. B. H. Barnett, c. 1900, “bas relief” bronze. Location unknown.

32. E. O. Painter.

33. James Baker.

34. Martha Reid.

35. Dr. John Durkee.

36. Twin Sons of Bion Barnett, n.d. Bronze. Location unknown.

37. Unnamed Portrait Medallions, n.d. Bronze. Location unknown.

38. Senator Duncan U. Fletcher, 1909. Bronze. Location unknown.

39. Cherub Fountain, 1910. Bronze. Klutho Park, Jacksonville, Florida.

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40. William James Bryan Memorial Tablet, 1911, 5 feet. Bronze, USS Battleship Florida. (Now destroyed).

41. Dr. John Gorrie, 1914, 7 feet. Marble. US Capitol, Washington, D.C.

42. Children of Perry Elwood, 1916, “life sized.” Marble. Location unknown.

43. Gen. Kirby-Smith, 1918. Bronze. US Capitol, Washington, D.C.

44. The Kiss of Science, 1918. Sterling silver. Location unknown.

45. Anderson Memorial Plaque, c. 1920. Bronze. Trinity Episcopal Church, St. Augustine, Florida.

46. Anderson Memorial Flagstaff, c. 1921. Bronze. Anderson Circle, St. Augustine, Florida.

47. World War I Memorial Plaque, c. 1923. Bronze. US Post Office, St. Augustine, Florida.

48. Jean Ribault Monument, May 1, 1924. Marble and bronze. Fort Caroline National Park, National Park Service, US Department of the Interior, Jacksonville, Florida.

49. Spiritualized Life, December 1, 1924, 20 feet. Marble. Riverside Memorial Park, Jacksonville, Florida.

50. A. Heard, 1928, “life size.” Bronze. Heard Bank Building, Jacksonville, Florida. Location unknown.

51. William B. Barnett, 1931, “life size.” Bronze. Bank of America Corporate Offices, Jacksonville, Florida.

52. Eagle Mothers: The Fine Arts, 1934. Program cover Eighth Annual Exhibition, Florida Federation of Art, Gallery of Fine Arts Society of Jacksonville. Location unknown.

53. Spivey Memorial Urn, 1937. Bronze. Florida Southern College, Lakeland, Florida.

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LIST OF REFERENCES

Adams, Adeline. The Spirit of American Sculpture. New York, NY: The National Sculpture Society, 1929. (Note inscription inside cover: “C. Adrian Pillars, Ringling Art School, Sarasota, Florida, September 29th, 1932”).

Adams, Don and Arlene Goldbard. New Deal Cultural Programs: Experiments in Cultural Democracy, 1995. http://www.wwcd.org/policy/US/newdeal.html (accessed August 21, 2008).

American Stone Trade Magazine, “Kirby Smith Monument,” Vol. XVII, Chicago, IL: author, June 1, 1917, 30.

Ancestry.com, “Descendants of John Adrian Pillars.” http://www.ancestry.com/?o_xid=21837&o_lid=21837 (accessed June 13, 2007).

Anonymous, “The Art of Battle for Victory, Buy More Bonds, Fourth Liberty Loan.” USA Today, 138(2780), (May 2010): 43-51. (accessed March 2, 2011, from ProQuest Education Journals. (Document ID: 2043376661).

Barwald, Pat. “After Five Years It Is Learned Who Posed for Classic Greek Statue in Memorial Park Here,” Jacksonville Journal, 1929. Bauer, Ruthmary. “Sarasota: Hardship and Tourism in the 1930s.” Florida Historical Quarterly 76, no. 2 (Fall, 1997): 135-151.

Becker, Howard S. Art Worlds. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982, 2008.

Beckh, Erica.”Government Art in the Roosevelt Era: An Appraisal of Federal Art Patronage in the Light of Present Needs.” Art Journal 20, no. 1 (1960): 2-8.

Bennett, Charles E., Laudonniere & Fort Caroline. Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 1964.

Billington, Monroe L. The Political South in the Twentieth Century. New York: Charles Scribner & Sons, 1975.

Bing, Margaret, A Brief Overview of the WPA, 2004. http://www.co.broward.fl.us/library/bienes/lii10204.htm (accessed on April 23, 2009)

Bogart, Michelle C. Public Sculpture and The Civic Ideal: New York City 1890-1930. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1989.

Bourdieu, Pierre. The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature. Edited by Randal Johnson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.

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Burkhim, Sadie W. “Sculptor Wins Praise for Bronze Memorial Statue,” Gainesville Daily Sun, June 14, 1928, 2.

Bush, G. W. “Sun-Bound Highways: The Growth of Florida as an Independent State, 1917- 1940.” A Guide to the History of Florida, Edited by Paul S. George New York: Greenwood Press, 1989: 107-116.

Bussard, Dick. “The Spirit of Youth Stands Tall in Riverside,” Jacksonville Journal, September 30, 1976, 60.

Cahill, Edgar H. Series 3: Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project: Administration of the State WPA/FAP, Florida. Report on the History of the FAP in Florida, 1942. (Reel 5289, Frames 0659-0707), 1942a. http://www.aaa.si.edu/collectionsonline/cahiholg/container183494.htm (accessed on April 6, 2009).

Cahill, Edgar H. Series 3: Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project. Administration of the State WPA/FAP. Florida, Jacksonville WPA Art Center Brochure, 1942 (Reel 5289, Frames 0651-0658), 1942b. http://www.aaa.si.edu/collectionsonline/cahiholg/container183494.htm (accessed on April 17, 2009).

Cahill, Edgar H. Series 3: Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project, 1934-1970. General Subjects, Circa 1934-1943, 1953. Advisory Committees, Florida. (Reel 1105, Frames 0442-0444), 1942c. http://www.aaa.si.edu/collectionsonline/cahiholg/container183494.htm (accessed on April 6, 2009).

Carter, John. “Cherub Comes Home to Springfield,” Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, October 25, 2006, 3.

Cash, William Thomas. The Story of Florida. New York, NY: The American Historical Society, 1938.

Champaign Daily Gazette, “Honor to Whom Honor is Due,” 1887.

Clark, Kenneth M. The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form. New York: Random House, 1956.

Craven, Wayne. American Art: History and Culture. Madison, WI: Brown & Benchmark, 1994.

Crooks, James B. “Changing Face of Jacksonville, Florida: 1900-1910,” Florida Historical Quarterly, 62, no. 4 (April 1984): 439-463.

Cutler, Harry Gardner. History of Florida Past and Present. Vol. I. Chicago, IL.: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1923.

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Da Camara, Mac. “Adrian Pillars Displays Work in Process of Creation at Exhibit: Six Artists Included in Show at Art School,” Sarasota Herald, March 25, 1935.

DiMaggio, Paul. “Classification in Art.” American Sociological Review, 52, no. 4 (1987): 440-455.

Dodd, Jean Hall. Arthur Gerrish Cummer. Jacksonville, FL.: Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, 1996.

Drane, Hank. “Jacksonville War Memorial Model Turns Up as St. Johns Tax Assessor,” Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, October 8, 1961, B-16.

Dubin, Steven C. “Artistic Production and Social Control.” Social Forces, 64, no. 3 (1986): 667-688.

Dye, Ann. “Dream of Sculptor Was Statue of Jackson,” Jacksonville Journal, May 31, 1960. Eck, Beth A. “Nudity and Framing: Classifying Art, Pornography, Information, and Ambiguity.” Sociological Forum, 16, no. 4 (2001): 603-632.

Editorial, Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, “Jacksonville Art,” 1918.

Editorial, Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, 1919. Falk, Peter Hastings , ed. Who Was Who in American Art, 1564-1975: 400 Years of Artists in America. Vol. III, Madison, CT: Sound View Press, 1999.

Fairman, Charles E. Art and Artists of the Capitol of the United States of America. Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office, 1927.

Barr Ferree, “The Lesson of Sculpture,” Craftsman, 7, no. 2 (November 1904): 122. Quoted in Public Sculpture and the Civic Ideal: New York City 1890-1930. Edited by Michelle C. Bogart. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.

Filaroski, Douglas P. “Meaningful Pose in Memorial Park Monument Stirs Thoughts,” Florida Times-Union, November 11, 1999.

Foley, Bill. “Postwar Good Intentions Went Awry—And Amok,” Jacksonville Florida Times- Union, n.d.

Foley, Bill. “River City‟s Short-Lived French Connection,” Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, April 16, 1994.

Foley, Bill. “The Lost Statues of Jacksonville Beach,” The Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, June 11, 1994.

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Fortune, “Unemployed Arts,” (May, 1937): 108-117. Quoted in Steven C. Dubin, “Artistic Production and Social Control,” Social Forces 64, no. 3 (1986): 675.

Gates, Sarah and Timothy Eaton. From Neo-Classical and Beaux-Arts to Modernism. West Palm Beach, FL: Eaton Fine Art, 2000.

Gerdts, William H. The Great American Nude. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1974. Ginzl, David J. Barnett: The Story of Florida’s Bank. Tampa, FL: University of Tampa Press, 2001.

Harmon, George. “Clip from Reader Answers Mystery About Models for Park Statue,” Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, November 8, 1987.

Harmon, George. “Friends of Memorial Park Seeks to Restore Area to Original Splendor,” Jacksonville Journal, November 1, 1987.

Hayes, Grace. “Association Forms to Preserve Memorial Park: Statue Could be Focus of Preservation Efforts,” Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, December 10, 1986: 1, 19. Hunter , Sam and John Jacobus, Modern Art, 3rd ed. New York: Prentice Hall and Harry N. Abrams, 1992.

Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, “Bronze Fountain was Unveiled,” n.d.

Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, “C. A. Pillars: Jacksonville‟s Sculptor,” n.d.

Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, “Florida Sculptor of Great Renown,” n.d.

Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, “ Kirby-Smith Statue Commission Meets Here December 6 To Pass on Completed Model of Statue,” n.d

Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, “Local Sculptor Completes Model Gorrie Statue: Gift of State of Florida to Hall of Fame in Washington, D.C.,” n.d.

Jacksonville Florida Times-Union , “Sculptor Appointed,” n.d. Jacksonville Florida Times-Union , Sculptor Pillars Has Returned From Tallahassee: Awarded Contract for $10,000 Statue of Gorrie, n.d.

Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, “Woman‟s Club Yesterday,” n.d. Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, “A Bust of Colonel J.J. Daniel,” 1894. Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, “Mr. Pillars Has In His Studio,” 1898. Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, “Medallion by Sculptor Pillars,” 1900. Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, Sculptor Pillars Submits Model, November 14, 1900.

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Jacksonville Florida Times-Union and Citizen, “Fifty Years of Progress, “April 4, 1901. Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, “Medallion Portrait of Senator Fletcher,” 1909.

Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, “Medallion of Mr. Fletcher: Life Size Profile to be Cast in Bronze of Senator-Elect Duncan U. Fletcher,” 1909a.

Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, “Talented Local Sculptor,” 1909b.

Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, “C. A. Pillars: Jacksonville’s Sculptor,” c. 1910.

Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, “Bronze Fountain was Unveiled: Appropriate Ceremonies Marked Presentation at Springfield Park Yesterday,” March 16, 1910.

Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, “Bryan Memorial Tablet As a Gift,” Evening Metropolis, 1911

Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, “Jacksonville Not Far Behind in Art Say Local Masters,” October 25, 1913.

Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, “Fame At Last For Florida‟s Greatest Man: Citizens of His State Remember Wonderful Work of Dr. John Gorrie, Inventor of Artificial Ice and Glass Eyes, 59 Years After His Death.” August 28, 1914, 5.

Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, “Pillars Speaks of the Contest Here for Statue,” 1917.

Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, “Wilson & Toomer Fertilizer Company Celebrates Twenty- Fifth Anniversary of Organization of the Company,” 1918.

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Dianne Crum Dawood earned a B.A. in art history at the University of North Florida in

Jacksonville, Florida, in 1996, where she graduated summa cum laude. With an interest in a career in the arts, she completed a Master of Public Administration and used her learning experience to serve as executive director of Theatreworks, a nonprofit providing educational theater to north Florida children and families. In 2009, she earned an Ed.D. in educational leadership from the University of North Florida. Her dissertation study was about magnet high schools for the arts. She is currently an adjunct professor at the University of North Florida teaching art history, resource development for nonprofit organizations, and leadership.

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