Paul Manship

Paul was never entirely sure that he was president of The Century. “But it’s preposterous,” he would say, “I never wanted to be president.” The rest of us were sure. We wanted him. And we will not forget that President Manship’s was one of the most animated, warmest, most genial administrations this old Association has ever had.

Sometimes at lunch on a Thursday, Paul would say:

“I think I’ll fly to Rome this afternoon.”

“But you can’t, Paul, you’ve got to conduct a monthly meeting tonight.”

“Meeting? But why?”

“Because you’re president.”

So Paul would put his hand to his forehead, a familiar gesture; but when night came there he would be, facing the eager crowd that had jammed the gallery to be with him while the Lamp burned.

No one was ever less conscious of his greatness, yet few were ever more deeply in love with their art. It was evident in everything he did or said and it was merged with a love of all good things; his sensuous delight in some special food or drink, or creation of architecture, or warmth of color in a painting, or the memory of the Seven Hills he knew so well. It was infectious; suddenly you felt it too; his enthusiasm embraced you and held you.

Paul’s doodles covered every scrap of paper in the telephone booths, the order blanks on the Round Table, the agenda of a meeting; they were designs that might some day find the flesh of bronze or stone; but all were bits of Paul scattered through The Century so that however much he might forget, the rest of us never could. Someone once said something in Latin about a monument; in our House there is one every way you turn: the Bowl, the medals, even the zodiac ash trays.

Surrounded by “abstract” expressions, one might say that Paul was an artist of the Old School; surely, most of his works are nostalgic of a time when there was an alliance between art and beauty. Their appeal, however, is direct, by passing the mental obstacle of “schools”; you cannot see them without a quickened pulse.

Paul’s concept of art, far from esoteric or special, was one all human creatures may understand; it is expressed in a scrap of paper found after his death:

“The primary impulse in the Arts is to give permanence to the fleeting moment, to bid it stay, because we cannot bear to lose it.”

His reference point was the Classic. As Centurion Herbert Kammerer said in his memorial for the National Sculpture Society, “The classic was what he loved and his was the Classic at its best. He sought the clarity of the classic form and its relation to the real, but imbued it with the freshness of life, dignified but joyful.”

Paul Howard Manship—he soon let his middle name slip away from him—was born in Saint Paul, Christmas Eve, 1885. His art education began in that city’s School of Fine Arts and was continued at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and at the American Academy in Rome. From his return to the United States in 1912, his activity was continuous and his creation prodigious. His success was immediate; he won prizes everywhere and was deluged with commissions. His sculpture is in his native Minnesota, in his adopted New York, in Washington, in France, in Italy, in Switzerland, and in all the major American museums.

The portrait of his daughter, “Pauline Seven Days Old” is said to surpass all of his early works in “tenderness and depth of emotion.” Of this, a Centurion admirer said, “Her small half-formed face looks with puzzled wonder at an un known world and the delicacy of the tiny fingers searching for her wrapping is infinitely touching.” The sculpture is in New York’s Metropolitan.

Best known to New Yorkers is “Prometheus” at the Rockefeller Plaza skating rink and beloved of children are the bronze gates of the Bronx Zoo, gay and humorous with many animals from “the sad absurdity of Apes” to the “amusing pomp and solemnity of the Ibis, the Crane and the Heron.” Other masterpieces are the Morgan Tablet, Young Lincoln, the Celestial Sphere, Girl and Gazelles, Centaur and Dryad. There is also the Soldiers Monument at Thiaucourt in France, and, in collaboration with Centurion architect Eric Gugler, the American War Memorial at Anzio.

Paul left us after being more than half his life in The Century. He went painlessly and in the midst of his work. There is grief at his going, but he has given us so much of himself and of enduring beauty that we can never quite say, “Addio.”

Roger Burlingame
1967 Century Association Yearbook

Manship was a prominent American sculptor who began his studies at the St. Paul School of Art. From there he went to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, before enrolling in the Art Students League of New York. From 1905 to 1907 he served as an assistant to sculptor Solon Borglum. In 1909, he won the highly sought-after Prix de Rome and attended the American Academy in Rome for three years. Manship was one of the first artists to become aware of the vast scope of art history being newly excavated and became intensely interested in Egyptian and pre-classical Greek sculpture.

When he returned to America from his European sojourn, Manship found that his refined style of simplified line and detail was attractive to both modernists and conservatives. He produced over 700 works in his career including creating statues and busts of Theodore Roosevelt, Samuel Osgood, John D. Rockefeller, Gifford Beal and Henry L. Stimson. Manship was very adept at low relief and used these skills to produce a large number of coins and medals, one being the John F. Kennedy inaugural medal. He was chosen by the American Battle Monuments Commission to create monuments following both World Wars. Probably his most well-known work is the Prometheus statue in Rockefeller Center, though for Centurions, his most famous creation is the Manship Bowl. This came about one New Year’s Eve in the 20’s when Ingalls Kimball raised up an ugly ceramic bowl and smashed it on the Art Gallery floor. He then turned to Manship and said, “Now, Paul, you will make us a bowl worthy of the Century.” Manship was also father of artist and sculptor John Paul Manship.

Manship served on the board of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and chaired the board. In 2004 the Smithsonian mounted a retrospective of his career.

James Charlton
“Centurions on Stamps,” Part I (Exhibition, 2010)