The Bronze Doors of the MARINERS’ MUSEUM

The Bronze Doors of THE MARINERS’ MUSEUM NEWPORT NEWS, VIRGINIA An explanation of the iconography and a brief history of the monumental narrative Bronze Doors that grace the entrance to The Mariners’ Museum. by Cynthia Katz Charter Member of The Bronze Door Society The Bronze Doors of The Mariner’s Museum An explanation of the iconography and a brief history of the monumental narrative Bronze Doors that grace the entrance to The Mariners’ Museum. Text and illustrations © by The Bronze Door Society of The Mariner’s Museum with the exception of the following: xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx All rights reserved. No part of this paper may be reproduced or transmitted in any form of by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act, as amended, or in writing by the Author or The Bronze Door Society. All correspondence and inquiries should be directed to The Bronze Door Society, The Mariners’ Museum, 100 Museum Drive, Newport News, VA 23606. The Bronze Doors of THE MARINERS’ MUSEUM The magnificent Bronze Doors at the original entrance to The Mariners’ Museum have protected the collections that are housed inside since 1937. They were commissioned by Museum founder Archer M. Huntington to New York sculptor Herbert C. Adams1 in 1932. They were cast in 1935 and 1936 by The Gorham Company of New York at their bronze foundry in Providence, RI. The doors and the adjacent fixed panels were installed by the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company in 1936 and 1937.2 Huntington’s global vision for the Museum is given form in the four massive panels and the transom piece. One of the panels displays Huntington’s mission: “This Museum is devoted to the culture of the Seas and its tributaries—its conquest by Man and its influence on Civilization.” Adams illustrated this mandate in high relief in the rest of the panels. He chose historic ship designs, detailed naturalistic sea life, images of Man working on and navigating the sea, and included maps of the continents and the heav- ens. Mythological figures are juxtaposed with historical watercraft, from an eighth-century Norse longship to a twentieth-century runabout. The ancient gods of the sea from Greek mythology, Poseidon, his wife Amphitrite, and their son Triton, are also featured. All the panels on the doors are framed with innumerable sea creatures—fish, squid, turtles, seaweed—and accurate maritime rope work and knots. Adams conceived the Museum entrance as a triptych, a Medieval and Renaissance three-panel devotional form associated with the altarpiece. The wide central panel is flanked with two smaller side panels, and the rectangular tympanum, of bronze and glass, contains a triangular composition that caps the central image. The use of sculpted monumental doors to “tell a story” dates back to at least the first millennium. This wonderful creation at The Mariners’ Museum is as powerful as any of the 3 classic monumental doors in Europe or Asia. 1 Explanatory notes are included in the Addenda at the end of this paper. For example, Note 1 provides a biography of Adams’ career. Note 2 escribes the fabrication and installation of the Bronze Doors at The Mariners Museum. Note 3 provides an overview of the emergence and evolution of monumental narrative doors on public buildings. 1 The Museum’s entrance architecture is relatively simple and otherwise unadorned, which helps further to set off the elaborate bronze work. The entrance wall of bricks and rough mortar is reminiscent of a rusticated Mediterranean-style of architecture favored by Huntington. It is interesting to note that the archives of The Mariners’ Museum Library contain early sketches of the Museum entrance by Huntington, in which he proposed a neo-classical façade adorned with columns that support a grand temple-like pedimented entrance, not unlike the Library of Congress in Washington or the magnificent St. Bartholomew’s Cathedral in New York for which Adams was also commissioned to create bronze entrance doors. Shipyard President Homer L. Ferguson, who appar- ently originally proposed the idea for the Museum to Huntington (who in turn tasked him to build and manage it) proposed a much more modern appearance: stainless steel or aluminum, in the manner of the skyscrapers being built in New York City during the period.4 So, in either of the original concepts, Adams’ doors would have been installed in a grander, more elaborate setting. There is no record why neither of these facades was adopted, but cost seems a likely factor since this was all happening during the begin- nings of the Great Depression—and because it appears that both men decided to concen- trate more on the collections inside the building than on the appearance of the outside of the building. The sculptural technique that Adams applied to the doors was crisp and clear. He made use of strong lines, flowing curves, varying depths and textures, and opposing gestures to create animation and motion. He obviously did an extensive amount of research to enable him to portray in accurate detail every aspect of the triptych’s imagery. For example, a beautifully rendered naturalistic border frames the doors and surrounds each scene. This border is teaming with sea life: flying fish, dolphins, jellyfish, Portuguese man-of-war, snails, turtles, frogs, catfish, seahorses, salamanders, shells, seaweeds, and more. Careful study of engravings and drawings in scientific and nature books and ar- ticles would have provided him with models to create this vibrant decorative motif that playfully conveys an exuberant sense of sea life. Adams also conveyed a sense of energy and motion through his modeling of the waves, the rhythmic and opposing placement of the figures, and flowing drapery to convey blowing winds. This energetic imagery harks back to Renaissance print, drawing, and painting precedents of which Adams would have been fully aware from his early training and continued research. A single strand of rope acts as an inner frame for each scene. Accurately rendered maritime knots are used as accents throughout the border. Tiny knots placed in the center of larger knots are decorative features that also serve a more functional purpose: conceal- ing screws used in the construction and installation of the panels. Each segment of Adams’ door composition can be interpreted individually, but when read as a whole, the composition becomes greater than the sum of its parts. The iconography of the central doors is meant to be read like a book page: left-to-right, top-to- bottom. The doors are divided into five horizontal registers. The first register contains beautifully sculpted and detailed reliefs of oar and sail powered watercraft from early maritime history. Adams included a Greek or Phoenician bireme, a Viking longship, a Mediterranean sailing vessel from the 18th or 19th century, another Greek ship, a Native American canoe, and a 15th or 16th century Spanish or Portuguese caravel. All of these images symbolize man’s early ventures onto the oceans and waterways of the world. 2 In the second and largest register, Adams focused on ancient Greek maritime mythology. Two young nude female figures known as sea nymphs begin and end this register, riding waves above swimming fish. The larger semi-draped female figure emerging from the rough seas, carrying a trident, is the Goddess of the Sea, Amphitrite, daughter of the sea deities Nereus and Doris, and wife of Poseidon, God of the Sea. The trident that she carries is an attribute of Poseidon, whom she faces. Between Amphitrite and Poseidon are two panels that show youthful male nudes, one riding the surf on a fish, and the other, seen from the back, fishes with a spear. Poseidon, the large muscular bearded male figure, turns toward his wife, Amphitrite, as he blows a conch shell trumpet, the attribute of their son, Triton. Poseidon also controls a tiller with the hand at his side, a reference to navigation and divine control of the seas. Triton appears further down the doors as a youthful human male figure from the waist up, with the tail of a dolphin or other fish for his torso. He uses the conch shell trumpet, with which he can both call up turbulent seas or calm them. In the third register, Adams combined the decorative nature of ship style with two ad- ditional images from ancient mythology. Three ships’ sterns represent late 18th and early 19th century European Men-of-War and ships of exploration. The fourth stern, adorned with an eagle, is an American ship, circa 1880, possibly the iconic frigate USS Constitu- tion. These relief sterns seem to burst from their small frames, adding to the registers sense of decorative energy. The first rectangular scene in register three is probably Aurora, Roman goddess of Dawn, riding on a wave. The second is a flexible sea nymph riding on a muscular hip- pocampus, a sea monster with the head and forequarters of a horse and the tail of a dolphin. The nymph’s outstretched arm, twisted torso, and bent knees echo the arched muscular stallion’s head, neck, and fore legs. The tightly braided mane accents the curve of his neck which counter-balances the powerful curve of his tail. Adams modified this image in 1935 while finishing the doors and created a large, freestanding marble sculp- ture entitled SeaScape for the Huntington’s estate at Brookgreen Gardens in South Carolina. In the fourth register, Adams introduced mortal man into his mythical sea world along with the ships that man created to move about on the sea.

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