Don Quixote in the Carolinas: the extraordinary sculptures of Brookgreen Gardens.

Don Quixote - Aluminium 1947 - by Anna Hyatt Huntington.

Brookgreen Gardens, the first public sculpture garden in America, has in its collection more than twelve hundred works by three hundred and fifty sculptors.

The arts patron and scholar, Archer Milton Huntington (1870-1955), and his wife, renowned sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington (1876-1973), founded the South Carolina garden museum in 1931.

LARGEST COLLECTION OF FIGURATIVE SCULPTURE IN THE U.S.

Designed around the walkways laid out by Mrs. Huntington, the gardens have long been regarded as one of the nation’s most beautiful botanical displays.

The Gardens exhibit the largest and most comprehensive collection of American figurative sculpture in the country, representing sculptors from the early nineteenth century to the present.

SOUTH CAROLINA'S FAMOUS NATIONAL HISTORICAL LANDMARK.

Situated on Waccamaw Neck in Georgetown County, South Carolina between the Waccamaw River and the Atlantic coast, Brookgreen Gardens is a National Historical Landmark, and is accredited by the American Association of Museums.

The huge exhibit is also a nature and historical preserve with a small zoo, and a nature exhibition center, dedicated to preserving native flora and fauna.

It has the only zoo accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums on the coast of the Carolinas.

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Maidenhood
White marble, 1896
36 x 42 x 25½ in.

GEORGE GREY BARNARD
Born 1863, Bellefonte, PA
Died 1938, New York, NY

Beautiful and powerful depictions of the human figure were George Grey Barnard’s forte. His concern with the play of light upon the surface of his objects resulted in figures having a dream-like quality of dark and shadow, luminescence and purity.

This serene female figure is an example of Barnard’s genius. He wrote to Archer Huntington: “This morning a clip came showing the Maidenhood in your Carolina gardens. I am happy to know you adopted the orphan. I finished that marble in a way I finished no other flesh.”

This is the only example of the full sculpture. A head in marble, carved after the figure was completed, is in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. According to Barnard, the pose – a candid one taken by the model at rest – was as faithful an interpretation of the living model as he could create. He described the work as being “nature in divine balance.”

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The Windy Doorstep
Bronze, 1910
14 x 6 x 4 in.

MARY ABASTENIA ST. LEGER EBERLE
Born 1878, Webster City, IA
Died 1942, New York, NY

Her pioneer work in depicting human beings engaged in every-day activities placed Abastenia Eberle in the forefront of the field of genre sculpture.

As early as 1906, Eberle began to create figures of a social nature, predating the artworks introduced to the public by the Ashcan School. As a settlement worker on New York’s Lower East Side, she had abundant subjects for her figures of children at play, women performing daily chores, and other scenes from life on the street, including the unpalatable realities of the tenements: unemployment, homelessness, and prostitution.

One of her most popular works, The Windy Doorstep, was inspired by an image of a farm woman in Woodstock, NY, sweeping on a windy day. Embodying form and movement, it won the Barnett Prize at the 1910 exhibition of the National Academy of Design.

Eberle wrote: “The piece was the expression of a subjective reality – though I myself was not aware of it at the time. Later I realized why the idea of ‘sweeping something out’ had been so insistent.”

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The End of the Trail
Bronze, 1915
40 x 23 x 8 in.

JAMES EARLE FRASER
Born 1876, Winona, MN
Died 1953, Westport, CT

James Earle Fraser spent his youth on the frontier, an experience that created a lifelong interest in western life and provided powerful subjects for his art. The emotional force of his work captured the public’s imagination.

When he died in 1953,
The End of the Trail was perhaps the best known sculpture in America. It was inspired by the poetry of Marion Manville Pope: “The trail is lost, the path is hid, and winds that blow from out the ages sweep me on to that chill borderland where Time’s spent sands engulf lost peoples and lost trails.”

Although a smaller version had been produced, exhibition of an enlargement in plaster at the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition at San Francisco, where it earned a gold medal, introduced it to America.

To the public, The End of the Trail became known as a symbol of the decline of Native American culture at the height of American industrialism.

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To learn more about Brookgreen Gardens, Click Here.