SWEET BRIAR COLLEGE LIBRARY GAZETTE Vol. XXXVI 2003 Lee Lawrie Sculptor of Ideas. Collaborator with Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue. He did not sculpt for gal- grand scale. His first private of a great architect during his leries or drawing rooms. He commission, however, was for a most fecund and interesting did not fashion fine objects for small bronze panel. Lawrie did- period. Lee Lawrie “modeled the private pleasure of individu- n’t have his own studio to work the figure sculpture for every als at leisure. He built, not for in, so he hammered a few nails important building designed men, but for Mankind. He into the door of his room, by Goodhue,” according to believed that he was doing modeled the clay on that, cast Richard Oliver. Furthermore, something that mattered— his relief, then searched for new Lawrie was the instant benefi- helping to build a better lodgings. He moved among ciary of all of the older man’s tomorrow. Lee Lawrie (1877- Chicago, New York and readings, travels, experience 1963) and his generation Boston, assisting A. Phiminster and ponderings. The firm even shaped the future of urban Proctor, Augustus St. Gaudens, paid for Lawrie’s architectural America out of stone and Philip Martiny, Charles Lopez, tour of Paris. bronze and steel. William Partridge, W. Clarke In Lawrie, Goodhue found Life as a boarding student at Noble, George Brewster and an equal. “Lawrie’s studio is a the St. Vincent de Paul School other Beaux Arts icons, quietly place I visit frequently, and we in Baltimore “did not appeal to nurturing his own mastery talk over any and everything, a boy with ideas of his own,” under their influence. and all of the time.” Goodhue Robert Wakeman writes, “so While assisting in the felt Lawrie was a man he could one day when he was told to Boston studio of Henry trust “to do the right thing out sweep the sidewalk …he . Kiston, Lee Lawrie met the of his own head without any placed the broom up against architect Bertram Grosvenor detail,” so he started making the building and walked off Goodhue of the firm Cram, architectural drawings with down the street with no place Goodhue and Ferguson—a tal- blank areas for Lawrie to fill in. to go.” Fourteen-year-old ented man of wide experience, They agreed on the role of Photo by Stephen Mirabella Detail of Saint at Church of St. Thomas, Lawrie survived by sketching eight years his senior. Thus sculpture in architectural Fifth Avenue, NYC. people in the park or on street began one of the great artistic design. “Sculpture for build- corners, then “selling the result collaborations in history. ings serves to accent the archi- to the unsuspecting model.” Lawrie and the older man tecture and sometimes also to The sketches must have been became true friends. His first characterize the building for good ones. Lawrie not only major commission for the firm which it is made,” Lawrie once survived, he made his way back required bas-relief panels wrote. “It seems like a waste of to Chicago, where he had lived depicting the great ages of effort when sculpture aims only with his mother after leaving western culture—Egyptian, to ‘decorate’.” Germany in 1882 when he was Hebraic, Greek, Roman, Teu- At the very time when five. He answered a two-word tonic, and Anglo Saxon—for Goodhue’s relationship with ad—“Boy Wanted”—and the Public Library in Pawtuck- Lawrie was developing, the one found himself enlarging sculp- et, Rhode Island. he had with his partner Ralph ture for the 1893 Columbian This friendship couldn’t Cram was souring. Their firm Exhibition in the studio of have come at a better time. dissolved, due to Cram’s con- Henry Clay Park. He grew Lawrie was able to hitch his stitutional inability to share the accustomed to working on a prospects to the rising fortunes limelight. He publicly mini- mized Goodhue’s contribution Studying while he taught, he before Christ, his doubts dis- to the art of Goodhue and to their success. Goodhue’s earned a B.F.A. in 1910. He solved; Christ, Mary and St. Lawrie. Above all else, the mas- bruised feelings would benefit instructed at Harvard from John; nine Messianic prophets terful handling of sculpture dis- Lee Lawrie: Goodhue pointed- 1910-1912 and continued above and the apostles on each tinguishes and truly completes ly recognized Lawrie’s contri- teaching at Yale until 1919, side. Other Lawrie carvings at the building. Goodhue under- butions, emphasizing that their where his Harkness Tower St. Thomas portray a living stood the importance of Lee relationship was one of equal beautifies the campus. Yale church in modern times—an Lawrie’s contribution. When collaborators. “Lawrie is the awarded him an honorary Mas- airplane, an automobile, WW I the building commissioners greatest, quickest, and least ter of Arts degree in 1932. generals, the Lusitania, and a decided that all artwork had to expensive,” he told clients. While teaching, Lawrie con- bustling Fifth Avenue scene. be put out for bid, Goodhue Goodhue’s patronage helped tributed a Gothic sculptural Goodhue insisted that the defended the man he called Lawrie’s art evolve at an accel- program of military figures to American Institute of Archi- “my collaborator” in a caustic erated pace down avenues he Goodhue’s West Point Chapel tects add Lee Lawrie’s name to letter—“the idea of putting this might not otherwise have before beginning the awesome his when awarding their 1921 on a competitive basis, precise- taken. reredos of St. Thomas Church Gold Medal to the reredos. ly as you do plumbing, is pre- In 1902, while Lawrie at Fifth Avenue. Lawrie compared his sculp- posterous. …How am I to get sculpted Arthurian legends for Ralph Cram had devised an tures and the buildings they competitive bids on the same one of their jobs, Goodhue ambitious replacement of the cover to branches on a tree. At work which, it must not be for- rode horseback four hundred fire-ravaged St. Thomas St. Vincent Ferrer (1916) on gotten, was designed almost miles from the Caspian Sea to Church at Fifth Avenue in Lexington Avenue, beings wholly by him?” He demanded the Persian Gulf, visiting Isfa- 1908. Goodhue began interior emerge from the surface of the Lawrie, “the only man in my hand, Shiraz, Samarkand, and work by 1913. Because the site stone. Lawrie created the first opinion that understands the Persepolis. Goodhue transmit- precluded big stained-glass crucifixion placed on the exte- relation between sculpture and ted his enthusiasm for ancient windows behind the altar, rior of a church, and he sculpt- architecture.” eastern art to Lawrie when he Goodhue designed an enor- ed figures rising out of the Lawrie became enthusiastic returned. Lawrie’s later work mous reredos, larger than any octagonal shapes of the turrets. over the chance to compose a bears testimony to his success Gothic example in history. Lee At Rockefeller Chapel of the unified expression of history, assimilating Mesopotamian Lawrie went to work modeling University of Chicago, com- politics, nature, philosophy, sculpture into a daringly mod- sixty figures to be carved in pleted in 1928, sparse sculpture and ethics on a single edifice. ern idiom. This growing eclec- Dunville stone then set in an placement makes a stunning When the capitol commission ticism was a break with his architectural arrangement that and integrated effect. hired University of Nebraska’s Beaux Arts beginnings. married the intricacy of a Bertram Grosvenor Good- poet-philosopher, Dr. Hartley Lee Lawrie joined the Yale miniature ivory carving with hue won the design competi- Burr Alexander, to consult with School of Fine Arts in 1908. monumental scale. Ernest tion for the Nebraska State Goodhue, it was Lawrie who Peixotto reported his “impres- Capitol at Lincoln in the sum- leaped into the work with rel- sion of richness combined with mer of 1920. This was to be ish. Lawrie used Alexander’s order . dignity combined one of the most important pro- suggestions as fuel for his own with grace.” The subject of the jects in the history of American ongoing explorations. The reredos seems to be all of architecture, combining classi- Nebraska State Capitol is a Christian lore—martyrs, mis- cal order with touches of masterpiece of reconciliation. It sionaries, saints, a living bishop, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, harmonizes competing artistic Tuttle, and an American Presi- Gothic, Byzantine, and Spanish styles, it resolves horizontal and dent, Washington; the sculpted mission adobe—the full gamut vertical thrusts, and it juggles a scene of St. Thomas kneeling of influences that contributed plethora of themes, images, personalities and events. Strangely enough, the grand- ness of scale and meaning never leaves the viewer feeling puny by comparison. Lawrie success- fully transmits 5,000 years of noble achievement and his sense of the shared greatness of mankind to everyone visiting the capitol. Lawrie’s artwork speaks across the centuries to the builders of the pyramids, the Photo by Stephen Mirabella Photo by Stephen Mirabella court of Darius, the cities of St. Thomas at the entrance of Church Detail of the Reredos Church of St, Thomas. Empty cross signifying the risen Nineveh and Nimrod, Athens of St. Thomas, Fifth Avenue, NYC. Christ at the center of the relief sculptures and life-size saints and Rome. In the Nebraska 2 perity and American might— sculpture with building design indeed that agriculture is the was employed to similar, awe- wellspring of civilization itself, inspiring effect. Those figures creating the surplus food that were, if anything, more archi- allows some to build, others to tectonic and modern than ever.