Beatrice Fenton
Beatrice Fenton (July 12, 1887 – February 11, 1983) was an American sculptor and educator born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[1] She was best known for her whimsical fountains.
Inspired by the painter Rosa Bonheur, she decided to become an animalier and began drawing animals at the Philadelphia Zoo. Her father, Dr. Thomas Hanover Fenton, an art patron and head of the Art Club of Philadelphia, was impressed with the drawings and showed them to a family friend, Thomas Eakins. Eakins found the drawings “too flat” and suggested that she “get some clay and mold it.” Fenton enrolled in a sculpture class taught by A. Stirling Calder in 1903, and her future direction was set.[2]
From 1904 to 1912, she studied with Charles Grafly at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia.[3] There she met Marjorie Martinet and Emily Clayton Bishop. Her relationship with Martinet lasted more than fifty years, and included the exchange of passionate letters.[4][5]
Fenton succeeded Samuel Murray as Instructor in Sculpture at the Moore College of Art and Design (formerly the Philadelphia School of Art for Women), and taught there from 1942 to 1953.[6]
Works by Fenton were shown at PAFA's annual exhibition most years from 1911 to 1964,[7] and she was awarded the George D. Widener Memorial Gold Medal in 1922 for Seaweed Fountain.[8] She was a member of the National Sculpture Society, and her Nereid Fountain was featured in the NSS exhibition of 1929.[9] A cast of Seaweed Fountain has been in the Brookgreen Gardens collection since 1934.[10]
She died in Philadelphia in 1983.
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The Coral Necklace.jpg
The Coral Necklace: Portrait of Beatrice Fenton (1904), by Thomas Eakins, Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio.
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Brookgreen Gardens Sculpture25.jpg
Seaweed Fountain (1920-22), Brookgreen Gardens, Murrell's Inlet, South Carolina.
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Sunflower dial Rittenhs Sq.jpg
Evelyn Taylor Price Memorial Sundial (1947), Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
References
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- Photographs of the Marjorie Martinet School of Art, George Glazer Gallery, New York City
- A Finding Aid to the Beatrice Fenton Papers, 1836-1984, bulk 1890-1978, in the Archives of American Art, by Jean Fitzgerald
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- ↑ The Annual Exhibition Record of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Peter Hastings Falk, ed. (Sound View Press, 1989), vol. II, p. 194; vol. III, p. 181.
- ↑ In the Garden, from Conner- Rosenkranz
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