Charles Allan Grafly, Jr. (December 3, 1862 – May 5, 1929) was an American sculptor, and teacher. Instructor of Sculpture at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts for 37 years, his students included Beatrice Fenton, Paul Manship, Albin Polasek, and Walker Hancock.
He created heroic sculpture for international expositions and war memorials, but also was noted for his small bronzes and portrait busts. His work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Academy of Design, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and other museums.
Education Grafly was born in the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the youngest of the 8 children of Charles and Elizabeth (Simmons) Grafly. His family were Quaker farmers, and of German and Dutch heritage. He attended Philadelphia public schools, and developed an interest in art at an early age. At 17 he apprenticed himself to John Struthers & Sons Marble Works, at that time one of the largest stone carving ventures in the country. He spent four years carving ornament and figures for Philadelphia City Hall, under the direction of sculptor Alexander Milne Calder.James-Gadzinski and Cunningham.
To improve his understanding of anatomy and his skill at carving figures, he began attending night classes at the Spring Garden Institute.Charles Grafly Collection, from Winterthur Library. He studied under Thomas Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts beginning in 1884, and followed Eakins to the Art Students' League of Philadelphia in 1886. He returned to PAFA the following year, and studied under Thomas Anshutz.
Grafly moved to Paris in 1888, where he studied for a year at the Académie Julian—drawing under Tony Robert-Fleury, painting under William-Adolphe Bouguereau, and sculpture under Henri Chapu. He shared a flat with fellow American art students Robert Henri, Harry Finney, William Hoefeker, and James Randolph Fisher.William Yarrow and Louis Bouche, Robert Henri, His Life and Works (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1921), p. 18. In 1889 he gained admittance to the École des Beaux Arts, but only stayed one year. He exhibited two ideal busts, Saint John and Daedalus at the Paris Salon of 1890. He exhibited his first major work, a life-size female nude, Mauvais Presage, at the Salon of 1891, which received an Honorable Mention. It is now at the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Career
The death of his father brought Grafly back to Philadelphia in early 1892, and he began teaching at the Drexel Institute and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.James Terry White, "Charles Grafly" The National Cyclopedia of American Biography (New York: James T. White & Company, 1904), p. 547. PAFA created the position of "Instructor of Sculpture" for Grafly, and under him the sculpture department was put "on an equal footing with painting for the first time". He took a one-year sabbatical in 1895, to get married and create what he hoped would be his masterpiece.
In Paris, he began work on The Vulture of War, a nightmarish sculpture group depicting carnage and death. It quickly evolved from a two-figure work to a three-figure work, and ultimately a four-figure work. These consisted of the colossal figure of War; who wields the uncomprehending Man as a weapon (swings him like a scythe); a lifeless woman (Death and Destruction); and the sinister figure of Plunder, who holds the globe under his foot. Sculptor Jean Dampt provided Grafly with weekly critiques as the work progressed. Of the four figures, only the plunderer was completed by the end of his sabbatical. Grafly returned to teaching at PAFA in Fall 1896, but continued to work on the sculpture group. A heroic-sized plaster of the plunderer was exhibited at PAFA's 1898 annual exhibition, and was part of Grafly's gold medal-winning exhibit at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris. The plaster was also part of Grafly's exhibit at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, but he abandoned it there rather than paying the freight fees to ship it back to Philadelphia.
Grafly was commissioned in 1898 to create two colossal busts for the Smith Memorial Arch, a Civil War monument in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia. Following sculptor William Ordway Partridge's withdrawal, Grafly also created the memorial's 15-foot (4.6 m) statue of General John F. Reynolds.Major General John Fulton Reynolds, from SIRIS.
Expositions
Fountain of Man Grafly and architect Charles Dudley Arnold were commissioned to create a fountain for the 1901 Pan-American Exposition, in Buffalo, New York. The Fountain of Man was crowned by an eerie half-hooded central figure, Man, the Mysterious, with faces on the front and back of his head representing the two natures of Man. Supporting the fountain's upper basin were nude figures representing the 5 senses, and supporting the lower basin were four pairs of crouching male and female atlantes, each couple representing contrasting emotions— love and hate, ambition and despair, etc.Vittoria C. Dallin, "Charles Grafly's Work", New England Magazine, vol. 25, no. 2 (October 1901), pp. 228-35. Sculptor Lorado Taft wrote: When opportunity comes, and with it demand for a man's highest abilities, he who has always done his best has himself well in hand. Such an opportunity came to Mr. Grafly at the Pan-American Exposition. While the sculptural decorations of that most charming of fairs were as a rule well suited to their purpose, and contributed much to its beauty, there were few features of striking originality. The one which stands out in memory as of permanent value, as a lasting contribution to the art of this country, is Mr. Grafly's "Fountain of Man".Lorado Taft, The History of American Sculpture (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1903), 508-11.
Louisiana Purchase Exposition
Grafly served as a member of the Art Jury for the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri, and designed the medal that was awarded to winning artists.Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission, 1906 (Washington, D.C.: Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission, 1906), p. 323.Louisiana Exposition, from SIRIS. Following sculptor John Quincy Adams Ward's withdrawal, Grafly created a heroic-size seated figure of Thomas Jefferson for the Cascade Garden."Grafly to Model Statue", The St. Louis Republic, December 16, 1903, p. 4. His Vérité (Truth) was carved in marble, and installed in a niche flanking the main entrance to the Palace of Fine Arts (now the Saint Louis Art Museum). His sculpture group, Electricity, was installed over an entrance to the Palace of Electricity.Helen W. Henderson, "Charles Grafly, Sculptor: An Apostle of Symbolism", The Booklovers Magazine vol. 2, no. 5 (November 1903), (Philadelphia: Literary Publishing Company, 1903), pp. 502-03.
Pioneer Mother Monument
Grafly's best known sculpture is probably the Pioneer Mother Monument (1913–15), in San Francisco, California."Charles Grafly", The Grove Encyclopedia of American Art, Volume 1, Joan M. Marter, ed., (Oxford University Press, 2011). John E. D. Trask, a museum administrator and former managing director of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, headed the Fine Arts Department for the planned 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition.Pioneer Mother, from SIRIS. The Pioneer Mother Monument Association raised $22,500 for the project, and Trask commissioned Grafly to create the sculpture in 1913. Grafly's plaster sketches are preserved at Wichita State University's Ulrich Museum of Art, and an early iteration of the work bordered on comical—a stalwart mother balancing screaming twin infants, one on each arm.Pioneer Mother, from Ulrich Museum of Art. Grafly's final model went in another direction, granting the woman and her two naked toddlers a simple dignity. The casting took longer than expected, and the sculpture was not in place for the exhibition's March 2, 1915 opening. Set atop a 26-foot (7.9 m) stepped concrete base, the monument was dedicated on June 30, 1915. The Pioneer Mother monument, by Charles Grafly, is a permanent bronze, a tribute by the people of the West to the women who laid the foundation of their welfare. It is to stand in the San Francisco Civic Center, where its masterful simplicity will be more impressive than in this colorful colonnade. It is a true addition to noteworthy American works of art and fully expresses the spirit of this courageous motherhood, tender but strong, adventurous but womanly, enduring but not humble. It has escaped every pitfall of mawkishness, stubbornly refused to descend to mere prettiness, and lived up to the noblest possibilities of its theme. The strong hands, the firmly set feet, the clear, broad brow of the Mother and the uncompromisingly simple, sculpturally pure lines of figure and garments are honest and commanding in beauty. The children, too, are modeled with affectionate sincerity and are a realistic interpretation of childish charm. Oxen skulls, pine cones, leaves and cacti decorate the base; the panels show the old sailing vessel, the Golden Gate, and the transcontinental trails.Stella G. S. Perry, The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition (San Francisco: Paul Elder and Company Publishers, 1915). Relocation of the monument to San Francisco's Civic Center never happened, and the sculpture was rediscovered during the Great Depression, weather-beaten and vandalized, amidst the ruins of the 1915 world's fair. Civic and historical groups, notably the Native Daughters of the Golden West,Warren & Georgia Radford, Outdoor Sculpture in San Francisco: A Heritage of Public Art, Helsham Press, Gualala, CA, 2002, p. 54. raised money to restore the sculpture for the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition.Pioneer Mother Memorial in Golden Gate Park, from San Francisco Recreation & Parks. After the exposition, it was installed in Golden Gate Park and rededicated on December 8, 1940.
Works exhibited 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, Illinois – portrait bust of Daedalus (bronze), A Bad Omen (plaster). The group was awarded a medal "for excellence".Official Catalogue of the World's Columbian Exposition, 1893: Part X. Department K. Fine Arts (Chicago: W. B. Conkley Company, 1893), p. 12. 1895 Cotton States and International Exposition, Atlanta, Georgia, Portrait of My Mother. The bust was awarded a silver medal. 1900 Exposition Universelle, Paris, France – The Vulture of War, The Symbol of Life, From Generation to Generation, portrait busts of his mother and wife. The group was awarded a gold medal.John E. D. Trask, "Charles Grafly, Sculptor, Art and Progress, vol. 1, no. 4 (February 1910), American Federation of the Arts, pp. 83-89. 1901 Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo, New York – The Vulture of War, The Symbol of Life, From Generation to Generation, portrait busts of his mother and wife, an architectural medal for Cornell University. The group was awarded a gold medal.Catalogue of the Exhibition of Fine Arts (Buffalo: Pan-American Exposition, 1901), pp. ix, 68. 1902 South Carolina Inter-State and West Indian Exposition, Charleston, South Carolina – The Symbol of Life, From Generation to Generation. The group was awarded a gold medal. 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, Missouri – The Vulture of War, The Symbol of Life, From Generation to Generation, In Much Wisdom; portrait busts of his wife, Dr. Louis Starr, artist Joseph R. DeCamp, and politician James McManes.Official Catalogue of Exhibitors, Universal Exposition, St. Louis, U.S.A. 1904 (Louisiana Purchase Exposition Company, 1904), pp. 6, 60. Grafly served as a member of the Art Jury. His works were not in competition for awards.