Charles Henry Niehaus
American, 1855-1935
The Scraper (Greek Athlete Using a Strigil), 1883 (modeled) 1912 (cast)
bronze
SBMA, Museum purchase in honor of Robert Henning 19th Century Art Acquisition Fund
2007.55
Photo of Niehaus, 1896, above, a view of the artist's studio in 1900, showing the plaster version of The Scraper, years prior to casting in bronze.
RESEARCH PAPER
Charles Henry Niehaus was a respected American sculptor known primarily for his monumental and architectural sculptures created during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Niehaus, born on January 24, 1855, in Cincinnati, Ohio, to German immigrant parents, was apprenticed in workshops of wood engraving, stonecutting and carving in marble. He later attended the McMicken School of Design in Cincinnatti, where he received the school’s top award for his work. Niehaus then studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, Germany, where he received the Academy’s top award, the first time it had been awarded to an American, for a baroque allegorical group entitled “Fleeting Time” (which no longer exists). The Munich school emphasized the ideal figure and the study of the antique, and his subsequent works show the strong influence of German neoclassicism and the tradition of academic realism in portraiture, even though at that time most American sculptors chose to train in Paris, where schools were using living models and developing the Beaux Arts tradition. His collective works are described as looking as though they had come from a dozen different hands, showing that he was influenced by these newer trends in sculpture as exemplified by his contemporaries like Saint-Gaudens and Daniel Chester French. His public sculptures were often described as being highly dignified, showing simplicity of line, but also a dry realism without the lighter expressionism of the French influence.
After completing his studies in Munich, Niehaus toured numerous art collections in Italy, France and England before returning to the United States in 1881, where he immediately received commissions to model two statues of the recently assassinated President Garfield (who was also from Ohio), a large bronze for the state capital and a marble statue for the rotunda in the Capitol Building. In addition, he was commissioned to model a marble statue of an Ohio statesman, William Allen, also for the Capitol rotunda. Niehaus went to Rome to complete these commissions, perhaps for the quality and access of the marble. During this time, he studied the immense collections of classical art in Rome and was inspired to create his own models. Only three of these works survive, “The Scraper,” “Caestus,” and “Silenus.” These art works, particularly “The Scraper,” were so greatly admired by the Romans that he was made a fellow of L’Associazione della Artistica Internazionale di Roma.
“The Scraper” or “Athlete Scraping Himself with a Strigil,” modeled in 1883, may have been inspired by a similar sculpture in the Vatican Museum. A bearded, muscular athlete stands firmly poised, his hand lifted to balance the turn of the figure and the bent knee as he looks down while scraping his leg with a strigil, a curved scraping element used to scrape the oil, sand and sweat off the body. This 84” tall, bronze statue was cast by the Jno Williams Foundry in New York under the auspices of Daniel Chester French in 1912 specifically for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. (A large plaster model, perhaps the one used for this copy, won a medal at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.) Niehaus’s representation of the male form was considered an innovation at that time; it was described as truthful modeling for combining classic simplicity of line and modern realism. The athletic figures of “The Scraper” and “Caestus” were described as having “more anatomical realism than the ordinary neoclassicist would have approved.” The calm, self-absorption of each subject in his task allows the viewer to objectively view the classical, idealized figure of superb physical form. “Their physical form is after all what interested Niehaus and still interests all viewers, who yet need suffer no bold-faced return of gaze, and may (if they wish) chatter about the exotic athletic artifacts…” The Met deaccessioned this statue in 1954 during a budget crisis, and it was purchased in 2007 by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. One other bronze casting is known of this piece, a 35½” statue acquired in 1935 by the Brookgreen Gardens, Murrell’s Inlet, South Carolina.
The second sculpture of an athlete, “Caestus,” (35¼” high) depicts a boxer standing firmly on his feet and lacing a caestus, an arrangement of leather straps wrapped in a crisscross pattern around his forearms which secured lead or iron weights over the knuckles. It was also modeled in 1883 and was probably inspired by the ancient statue of a pugilist, Polluce (Cestiario), in the Borghese Collection. Two bronze castings dated 1901 are known to exist, one at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the other at the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C. The only known statue of “Silenus,” also cast in 1901 and often described as a Panlike woodland spirit which usually resembles a satyr, was acquired by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1987.
When Niehaus again returned to the United States around 1885, he established his studio in New York City where he received a steady stream of commissions, including several by competitive submissions, for monumental and architectural sculpture. He was elected to the National Academy of Design, the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the New York Architectural League, and the National Sculpture Society. His works received many awards over the ensuing years, including gold medals at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo in 1901, the Charleston Exposition in 1902, and the St. Louis Exposition in 1904. Niehaus’s most productive years were those through 1910. He resettled in Grantwood, New Jersey, working in his studio Eagle Crest until his death on June 19, 1935; little information is available about these years.
Public monuments by Niehaus include seven statues (including Garfield, Allen, Ingalls, and Morton) in the Capitol building, statues of Moses and Gibbons for the Library of Congress, six statues (including Barlow, Berkeley, Davenport, and Hooker) for the Connecticut state capitol, four statues (Lincoln, Farragut, McKinley, and Hackley) in Muskegon, Michigan, others for Memphis, St. Louis, McKinley’s tomb at Canton, Ohio, John Paul Jones for US Military Academy, Francis Scott Key Monument in Baltimore, the Driller at Titusville, PA, and at least thirty Civil War monuments and several World War I memorials in New Jersey towns, as well as equestrian statues. His most famous public statue is the Samuel Hahnemann Memorial in Washington, D.C. His architectural sculpture includes pediments for the Connecticut State Capitol, the New York City Appellate Court House, the Kentucky State Capitol Building in Frankfort and the Buffalo Historic Society, and the highly acclaimed Astor Memorial Doors at Trinity Church, New York.
Niehaus returned to the neoclassical form for “The Driller,” a monument to honor Colonel Drake who drilled the first oil well in Pennsylvania at Titusville. It is a large nude male figure of powerful build in a kneeling position, with uplifted hammer, in the act of driving the drill into the rock. It has been described as “an adaptation of the heroic in size and in character to strictly modern requirements of design, a piece of immense value.” The last classical statue, a commission for Baltimore chosen from nearly a hundred submissions in 1914, was to honor Francis Scott Key, author of the national anthem. Niehaus chose the figure of Orpheus plucking a lyre held on one hip and gazing outward and upward, a heroic male nude as a symbol of music. The statue, 24 feet high standing on a base of similar height, was completed in 1922.
It is clear from the reviews of both contemporary and later critics of Niehaus’s work that the neoclassical statues, as represented by “The Scraper,” are the most consistently appreciated of his works. The combination of the classic simplicity of line with strong realistic modeling of the nude figure, with no emotional or moral overtones to detract from the good modeling, provided unique realistic-classic figures.
Prepared for the SBMA Docent Council by Irene Stone, 2008
Taft, p.395
Proske, p. 23
Pennington, p. 1
Post, p. 248
Vance, p. 358
Taft, p. 404
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