LORADO TAFT and

CHICAGO’S OREGON TRAIL

By Stephen P. Thomas

Read at the Meeting of The Chicago Literary Club

November 16, 2009

Thursday, June 16, 1904, 6:30 pm. With a slight bump the Burlington express train lurches forward from Chicago’s original Union Station headed westward. In the same car, seated together and Oregon-bound are several Chicago families and individuals well-known to each other and united in their common devotion to the arts. Among these are Illinois’ leading sculptor Lorado Taft, his wife Ada with their young daughters, novelist Henry Fuller, writer Hamlin Garland, painter Ralph Clarkson and editor and arts enthusiast James Dickerson. Others in their circle have gone in advance to the Oregon destination, including Taft’s two sisters, Zulime and Turbia, painter Oliver Grover, University of Chicago lawyer and business manager, Wallace Heckman, and painter Charles Francis Browne. Soon the train clears Chicago’s city limits and is speeding across the northern Illinois prairie. Fields of oats, clover, wheat and newly-sprouted corn are on all sides. Farmers still at work peer at the passing train from behind teams of horses pulling wagons and machinery. It is still bright outside as the train chases the early evening sun past Aurora, DeKalb and on to the west.

The passengers speak amiably to each other, two mentioning their recent visit to St. Louis and the Louis and Clark Exposition now underway there, the first world’s fair held in America since the great Columbian Exposition in Chicago of 1893. Taft points out that the St. Louis exposition is admirable, but does not surpass Chicago’s Fair which he so fondly recalls. Someone remarks that the Olympic Games of 1904 now underway in St. Louis were ceded by Chicago to St. Louis which insisted it could not proceed with its own World’s Fair if Chicago insisted on hosting these games at the same time. Two hours pass quickly, and the sun is just setting as the train crosses the Rock River and comes to a stop to release some of its passengers, including all those we have named.

Where are we? In Oregon, Illinois, near our destination. As the passengers leave the train and collect their belongings two horse-drawn wagons are waiting. When all are boarded, the wagons make their way back across the Rock River and start a slow climb up a road leading to the bluff on the east side of the River. The last glimmer of twilight across the river valley to the west is eroding as the party pulls into their destination --- the Eagle’s Nest campground where a group of summer residents, including some of the travelers’ wives, children and family members are gathered to greet them. A new moon is becoming evident in the western sky. There are lanterns, banners, and welcoming songs as they proceed to supper in the communal dining hall, and then to their cabins or tents after supper, more conversation and merry making. So our modern Oregon trail travelers (unlike the pioneers before them who went to the west coast) have not come so far after all. But in another sense they have come a great distance since they are all young Chicagoans (most of the adults are in their mid- 40s) devoting their lives to the art and literature after coming from mostly rural backgrounds in places where the memory and experience of early frontier days is only a generation or so past.

My purpose is to give a general picture of Lorado Taft’s life and times as well as to pay tribute to one of our Chicago Literary Club members who exerted a great influence over his chosen city and many other communities and individuals throughout America in the course of his teaching, his public speaking, and as a result of his extensive body of installed artistic work and wide ranging scholarship in the field of sculpture.

Lorado Zadok Taft, was born in 1860 in Elmwood, Illinois, then and now an obscure but well tended town of fewer than 2,000 residents west of Peoria and east of Galesburg. Taft and his family moved to Champaign, Illinois in 1871 where Lorado’s father, Don Carlos, was teaching at the new university. Taft entered college there in 1875, leaving with a masters degree in 1880 with a course of general studies which included French and German. During his Champaign years Taft became fascinated with the field of classical sculpture, mainly through his association with John Milton Gregory, first regent of the university, whose lectures on classical art and architecture fascinated young Lorado. Dr. Gregory was determined that the university should have an art gallery, and raised private funds (the Illinois legislature being unwilling) to finance the purchase and shipment to Champaign from France of a number of reproductions of classical works of sculpture.

These arrived from their long journey to Champaign in due course in complete shambles as a result of poor packing and handling of the shipping crates. Thereupon Gregory, along with Lorado and his father set upon the tedious work of reassembling pieces from the broken plaster casts. Here is an account of this experience by Taft written for the university’s 1918 Semi-Centennial History:

Scores of strange-looking packing cases and bushels of fragments of plaster casts ! . . . The ‘hope of western art’ lay reduced to an ash heap. . . . Dr. Gregory and my father put on their overalls and devoted hours every afternoon to patching those fragments together. I . . . soon became expert in finding ‘fits’. Then Mr. Kenis, a little Belgian sculptor, was lured from Chicago and the work went merrily on. The Laocoon group . . . was in a thousand pieces. If you do not believe it, let a committee scrape away the paint and you will find them.

The new university gallery space opened at the end of 1874 with sixteen full-size and fifty-two reduced size casts. Some of these pieces are still on display in Champaign. To continue with young Lorado’s fascination with sculpture, he wrote in 1879 while still at college:

Probably the most important event of my life . . . was the coming of Mr. Kenis, my old teacher of modeling. . . . I was about to be pronounced a failure, when my deliverer appeared in a suit of linen clothes and with his hair and face spattered full of plaster of Paris. I was initiated into the mysteries of the clay tub --- I was rescued ---- had found something that I could do. . . . This was about Christmas ’74. I have continued my work ever since, with varying success, but an ever increasing love for it, and if Heaven permit, shall continue to do so until another world offers superior inducement:

Taft was just fourteen years old. He never wavered from this conviction that he had found his life’s work and mission.

Taft’s father, Don Carlos Taft, born in New Hampshire in 1827, had been recruited to come to Elmwood to teach in area schools and help conduct services at the local Congregational church. Don Carlos was a man of real learning and wide intellectual scope, a product of Amherst College and Union Theological Seminary. His abilities came to the attention of Dr. John Milton Gregory, regent of the new Illinois Industrial University in Champaign, and Don Carlos became assistant professor of geology pro tempore in 1871. The first graduating class of 20 received degrees in 1872. Don Carlos was soon appointed to a permanent position as professor of zoology and geology earning about $1,800 annually during an eleven year tenure in Champaign. During this period he also taught courses in anatomy, physiology, physical geography, paleontology, meteorology and mineralogy. He appears to have been largely self-taught in most of these fields, just as young Lorado was home schooled by his mother until he was ready to enter the University of Illinois at age 15 in 1875. Don Carlos purchased a fine spacious home in Champaign where his four children enjoyed a joyous and largely healthful youth. The other children were Florizel Adine (1862), Zulime (1868) and Turbia (1870). All had nicknames --- ‘Rado’, ‘Flory’, ‘Tetie’ and ‘Tubbie’. My researches have not disclosed the origin or motivation for these odd names, but Don Carlos was clearly an unconventional man by the standards of his or any other time, hugely whiskered, oddly dressed, devoted to phonetic spelling, given to philosophic expression and moral admonition, but respected by students and family. As young Lorado was ready to leave the university and make his way to the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris in 1880, Don Carlos also left the university (the precise circumstances for this are obscure) to pursue a career in banking in Kansas with Lorado’s younger brother, Flory. Lorado’s mother and sisters remained in Champaign.

While still an undergraduate at Illinois, Taft had been advised by his sculpting mentor, Mr. Kenis, that he should continue his education abroad, preferably in France, after college. Young Lorado soon learned that Clarence Blackall from the Class of 1877 was already studying there. Taft was advised by Blackall that he could attend the Ecole and live in Paris for $500 annually, but preferably should budget $600. In 1880 Lorado was off to Paris having settled with Don Carlos on a budget of $365. At the end of his first year Taft (whose entire life was marked by earnest frugality) reported to his family first year expenditures of $292.50. His rent at No. 4 rue Paillet near the Sorbonne was just $26.40 annually. He did not mind the 142 steps up to his seventh floor room from which he could view the Pantheon and much of Paris. Lorado loved Paris, made a fine success of his studies and studio work there, and returned to France whenever he could in the years to follow.

It appears that the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, whose work and presence were all around Paris during the five years Taft was there, made little or perhaps no impression on him. His chief diversion from his work in the studio was teaching Sunday school at McAll Mission, a non-denominational Christian movement bringing simple religion to French working families, including Bible study, worship services, hymn singing, social hours, even English lessons. Taft avoided the seamier pleasures available in Paris, observing of his classmates in a letter home: They are thoroughly debauched, yet generous, . . . kind hearted, would do anything bad to please themselves or anything good to please a friend.

When Taft returned from Paris in 1885 he settled in Chicago, feeling that his energy and talent could thrive in this growing city which was by then recovering strongly from the 1871 fire. Taft made friends easily among the small community of Chicago artists, established a modest studio downtown, began a teaching career at the Art Institute and soon was caught in the whirlwind of work and planning for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Daniel Burnham selected Taft to superintend important parts of the sculptural work for the Fair, including the design, construction and installation of all the works which would adorn William Le Baron Jenney’s massive Horticultural Building.

Teaching at the Art Institute, Taft had already established a welcoming atmosphere in his studio working with young women artists. Others thought the strenuous aspects of working with clay and plaster on large sculptural works was inappropriate for women. Not Taft. Women were always welcomed in his studio and classrooms, first at the Art Institute and later at his Midway Studios in Hyde Park when in 1906 he began teaching at the University of Chicago where he would continue to work, lecture and teach in an untenured capacity for the balance of his years.

The work for the World’s Fair proceeded at a furious pace. In addition to Taft, noted sculptors from across the land were also at work creating new installations for the fair. Skilled assistants for this work were in short supply. Taft asked Daniel Burnham, who had selected Taft and had overall authority over the construction work at the fair, whether it would be permissible to engage women assistants. Burnham replied: Employ anyone who can do the work . . . hire white rabbits if they can help out. The women Taft hired were to become some of the nation’s finest sculptors, and thereafter became known as Taft’s White Rabbits. One of these was his younger sister, Zulime.

There were great expectations in the wake of the fair that Chicago would become an internationally acclaimed center of the arts. Many artists lingered in Chicago after the fair to pursue their work. Others remained in the conviction that the center of artistic gravity had moved from the East Coast to Chicago. In the field of architecture this was largely true. But in the visual arts and in literature, despite valiant efforts, these expectations were not fulfilled. In time, although the origins of the term are obscure, Chicago became widely known as the Second City.

In the early 1890s Taft and some of his artistic comrades had established a pattern of meeting once a week or so for refreshment, to discuss their work in the arts and at times to display works or perform for each other. This informal society came to be known as The Little Room and met at various locations before settling in the Fine Arts building where the gatherings continued for more than 20 years after 1900. Taft’s own studio was relocated to the Fine Arts Building for ten years starting in 1897. Among those who attended sessions of The Little Room were most of those named in our introductory scene on the train to Oregon, Illinois, but also others such as literary critic and arts patron Harriet Monroe, reformer Jane Adams, dramatist Anna Morgan, architects Irving and Allen Pond and journalist George Ade. This is the group from which the founding members of the Eagles’ Nest camp association were drawn, partly to enable their society to function throughout the year, and with their entire families present for the summer season. It is during these early years of The Little Room that Taft was also a member of this Chicago Literary Club, delivering five papers between 1890 and 1899. We have no record of his papers beyond their quite descriptive titles nor do we know the reasons for his resignation from this Club, but he was a busy and still young man with young children. Evening travel from Hyde Park downtown was not as easy then as it is now.

Taft had married Carrie Scales of St. Louis in 1890. In little more than a year she died in childbirth. In 1895 he married his first wife’s niece, Ada Bartlett of Boston. Of this marriage, Lorado’s younger sister Zulime wrote many years later: She was a most wonderful wife to him. She didn’t have a beauty complex as Carrie had had. In the same unpublished profile of her brother Zulime recalled events in the 1880s and the close relationship she had with her brother: As soon as Lorado came home [from Paris], he always talked to me about preparing to keep house for him, and I worked hard learning to cook; . . and then . . . he . . . asked another girl [Carrie] to take my place which at first seemed a devastating thing to me. . . . Afterwards . . . Carrie went away for a visit, and Lorado foolishly wrote that he would have missed her if I hadn’t been there. It was unutterably stupid on his part. She wrote back that if he was so happy she didn’t see that she was necessary; . . . Lorado rushed down to St. Louis to explain, and he was forgiven.

At the turn of the century, the bulk of the work of American sculptors involved Civil War monuments, cemetery memorials and busts of notable figures (often made from death masks) to be placed in entry foyers in galleries or homes. Taft struggled with these limitations on commissions and assignments throughout his career. Late in his career he wrote:

I am tired of dead folks. I am tired of living on them. . . . I have a delightful morgue lined with death masks and still deader busts. . . . It is a ghoulish way to live. . . . the newspapers agree that a man should have no monument during his lifetime. . . . I beg of you, give the sculptor a chance at him while he is alive.

Even so, Taft had many fine commissions through the years, as well as projects of his own conception for which he was able to obtain sponsorship. Here is a brief summary, but only of the highlights, because the complete listing of Taft’s works runs to twenty-eight typewritten pages and includes about 300 works and installations. Two of Taft’s most notable works are at the University of Illinois --- The Blind (1908), now in the foyer of the Krannert Art Museum, was conceived and worked up in clay and plaster at the Eagle’s Nest camp, widely exhibited and admired, but not finished in bronze until the late 1980s. It depicts a group of eight sightless adults holding up a young child who serves as their collective visionary as in the Maeterlinck drama which inspired this work. Taft’s beloved Alma Mater (1929) has been moved about at Illinois but is presently in a location with sparse direct light which Taft would not approve outside Altgeld Hall.

On the bluff at Oregon, IL, extending 125 feet above the river valley below and built as a large project at the Eagle’s Nest camp is the forty-eight-foot-high statute of a native American, typically titled Blackhawk (1911). This is the tallest of Taft’s work and perhaps the most complex in design and execution. The next year, 1912, marked the installation of Taft’s Columbus Fountain near the train station in Washington DC, a much admired work.

A 1905 bequest established the Ferguson Fund to finance public monuments and sculptures in Chicago. The first work completed with the support of this Fund was Taft’s Fountain of the Great Lakes, installed with much fanfare in 1913 on the south-facing portico of the Art Institute. This fine work is now gathering dust facing west in the courtyard of the Art Institute directly across from where we sit this evening. Each of the five great lakes is represented by a fully clothed female, arranged so that water passes from one to the other in the same sequence as in the actual lakes. It is totally obscured from public view in the summer surrounded by a grove of hawthorn trees. Inside the Art Institute is the Solitude of the Soul marble sculpture (1911), four female figures who do not to me seem particularly happy in their surroundings. Perhaps the largest and one of Taft’s most controversial works is the monumental Fountain of Time (1922) installed at the east-facing west end of the Midway Plaisance in Hyde Park. This work, also financed in part by the Ferguson Fund (as was its fairly recent restoration from, ironically, the ravages of time) depicts about 90 figures, including Taft himself, passing through various stages of life as a Father Time figure looks on across a reflecting pond. Taft had conceived an installation comparable in scope to be located at the east end of the Midway titled The Fountain of Creation, but although partially designed and executed in his studio, this work was never financed and completed.

I will mention three other works: Lincoln, The Young Lawyer (1927) which is in a park in Urbana, IL (this is in stark contrast to most of the Lincoln sculptures of the time which depicted a much older and war-weary Lincoln), The Pioneers (1928) in Taft’s birthplace, Elmwood, IL (depicting an armed pioneer family all except for their dog looking apprehensive, as if on the watch for fire or hostile visitors), and the Lincoln-Douglas debate memorial tablet (1936) installed at a debate site in Quincy, IL shortly before Taft’s death. These are only highlights intended to afford a glimpse of the range and scope of Taft’s work, notwithstanding his aversion to, as he termed them – dead folks. I have not tried to illustrate my talk for two reasons --- One, this is a literary club. Our focus is on words. Two, there are many photographs of Taft’s work readily available on the web. Or you can visit them in person.

Taft really had four parallel careers. He was a working sculptor for his entire adult life. He was a teacher, joining the faculty at the School of the Art Institute soon after his return from Paris where he would continue to teach and lecture for many years. In 1906 he established Midway Studios on Ingleside Avenue just south of the Midway Plaisance at the University of Chicago. It consists of a converted and relocated stable or barn attached to a Victorian-style house and has received Chicago and national historic landmark designations. Taft taught in the fine arts program of the University and worked there until his death in 1936. You can walk through the entry today --- no one will challenge you ---- and see works in progress by current students, as well as remnants from Taft’s days, including a large dining table where he would gather with students and others for a mid-day meal. Taft’s third career, to which I will return, was as a public lecturer and advocate for art appreciation, particularly works of historic significance and for the beautification of public places in America. His fourth career was as a scholar of contemporary and historic sculpture in America. In addition to many articles and speeches over the years, he wrote two widely admired books on sculpture, The History of American Sculpture (1903), revised in 1925, the standard work on this subject until 1968, and Modern Tendencies in Sculpture (1921) based on a 1917 series of lectures at the Art Institute of Chicago. Any one of these four careers would have been sufficient to secure Taft’s place in the cultural history of America.

Now, a bit more about the summer camp called Eagle’s Nest in Oregon, IL. This campground and summer artist colony was established in 1898 by Taft and a few friends (mostly recruited from a group which met with some regularity in Chicago from the early 1890s as part of the Little Room ensemble) who wanted an accessible, congenial place to spend summer holidays. The group had tried a site in northern Indiana, but there were problems with mosquitoes, and Taft was susceptible to malaria resulting from an 1879 trip he made with his father to Central America. The group had been invited to the Eagle’s Nest site by Wallace and Tillie Heckman who owned the land on the bluff overlooking the Rock River with the river valley and town of Oregon below to the west. Heckman was a lawyer and business manager of the relatively new and growing University of Chicago. In time the group was granted a lease over the campground for $1 a year which later tradition had them paying in pennies in an elaborate summer ceremony. Thanks to Jan Stilson’s 2006 book on the camp, we have a good account and record of its history. Absent her diligence it is likely that dusty records, fading memories, and archival inattention would have soon resulted in much of the camp history which she uncovered being forever lost.

I now ask your indulgence for a small but I think worthy diversion which fascinates me. What the campers soon learned was that this Eagle’s Nest location had acquired its name as a result of a visit to the Oregon, IL area by Margaret Fuller in 1843. Margaret Fuller is one of the most notable American women of the first half of the nineteenth century. Born in the east, she became an intellectual contemporary of Emerson and Thoreau and edited the quarterly Dial literary magazine during its brief history from 1840 to 1844. She was a literary critic for the New York Tribune and wrote a study which advocated equal rights for women in America. Fuller was a woman of strong views, uneven temperament and variable health which her trip to Illinois was intended to restore.

Fuller was enraptured by the beauty of the Rock river valley at Oregon and the bluff above. At the top was a long-since deceased cedar tree with an eagle’s nest in its branches, and directly below a small spring coming out of the bluff. Inspired by this arrangement, Fuller composed a poem titled Ode to Ganymede after which the Heckmans later named their residence on the bluff above. Ganymede was a handsome Trojan prince in Greek mythology abducted by Zeus in the form of an eagle to serve as cupbearer to the gods and as companion to Zeus.

In time the elongated island in the Rock River below this bluff was named for Margaret Fuller as is a small street south of Oregon which runs for a block or two west of the river plain. I had learned of Margaret Fuller in the course of my Thoreau studies. I was astounded a couple of years ago traveling in the area and knowing nothing of this local history to see a street sign which read Margaret Fuller Way.

The Fuller story has a sad ending. A few years after her trip to Illinois she was drowned at age 40 in 1850 off New York harbor while returning from Europe. Her ship ran aground and was destroyed in a storm. She might have swum to safety, but insisted on clinging to her two-year-old child. Emerson sent Thoreau to Brooklyn to scour a warehouse containing belongings of some of the passengers which had washed ashore. Nothing of Fuller’s was found on this, Thoreau’s only trip to New York.

When I first took an interest in Lorado Taft in mid 2008 I was motivated mainly by the fact that Taft had been a member of this Chicago Literary Club for 10 years in the 1890s and, would celebrate a sesquicentennial year (150^th anniversary) in 2010. While our Club records do not contain a copy of any of the papers Taft delivered to the Club, I have located one published article of Taft’s --- Paris from a Mansard ---- which corresponds in time (1890) and title to a paper he delivered, so we perhaps have one to add to our own archives. As I learned more about Taft, striking parallels in our lives caught my attention.

We were both born in central Illinois small towns. We both attended the University of Illinois. We both traveled and worked abroad after our college years. We both settled in Chicago and for some 40 years in the Hyde Park neighborhood. We both had doting mothers and fathers who were influential in our lives in unexpected ways. We both had the advantage of being born in years (1860 and 1938) such that our 18^th birthdays did not fall at a time when the United States was at or about to enter a major war. So military service was not compelled. Beyond that our lives unfolded at times of extended relative economic prosperity in this country. Taft’s death did come in the midst of the Great Depression and he was clearly affected by it economically.

In addition, there is the bond between us of what I will term the aesthetic spirit in which what things look like, sound like, feel like -- their artistic element, is of paramount importance. Taft came to this view of his life much earlier than I did, but that is why this man has interested me so in recent months. I have been twice to the cemetery and Taft museum in Elmwood, several times to the archives in Champaign, crawled all over the Eagles’ Nest site near Oregon which is now part of Lowden State Park, visited and walked about at will in the essentially untended and unaltered Taft Studios at the University of Chicago, and looked at his work at the Art Institute, on the Midway in Hyde Park, and at all the places mentioned above. It has seemed to me most of the time (I will be frank) that his work belongs solidly in the nineteenth century which was approaching its end just as Taft was starting out.

After spending some time looking into Taft’s life and work, it occurred to me that I knew essentially nothing about the physical process by which sculptors actually work and practice their craft. So I looked into it, visiting the Taft Midway Studios at the University of Chicago which are essentially intact from his time there more than 70 years ago. I also enrolled in a course in sculpture at a place called The Clearing, established by Jens Jenson in the 1930s near Ellison Bay at the end of the Door County peninsula in Wisconsin. In that course I was able to fashion a bust of a young Taft from a photograph and, this being a literary club, it is my only prop for this evening’s presentation.

What I learned is that the large pieces of sculpture we see in public places almost always start out as much smaller models made from specially selected clay. Once the sculptor is satisfied with his model, work begins in the creation and construction of the object in real dimensions. This starts with a frame which may be of wood, metal or any material which will provide a strong internal structure for the piece. To this framework the sculptor (and often this will include assistants, interns, students, anyone he can recruit to lend a hand) apply layers of clay or plaster to make the piece in full size. Often this is not the last step, but still only a preliminary. The next step is to prepare the full-size model for final execution. Thus a plaster mold may be affixed to the piece in sections all around. Then the outer mold is removed and filled with concrete or whatever material is selected for the final work. If it is a large piece, this may be done by placing the mold in the public place where the sculpture will be displayed because of the great weight of the material which is used to fill the mold. The most expensive process is to create a bronze cast of the sculpture by pouring molten metal between the internal sculpture form and its outer mold. When the metal has hardened, both the internal and external plaster or clay materials can be removed. There are many variations of these steps, but the point is that the creation of a large sculpture involves many steps, a variety of materials, large working space and willing hands.

I had some difficulty early on coming to a sense of Taft as a living person --- someone I could visit and speak with. Then I happened upon the key which unlocked the door outside which I had lingered for several months. That was author Hamlin Garland, founder in 1907 with Taft and others, including the writer Henry Blake Fuller (a distant relative of Margaret Fuller’s) of first named The Attic, and later this Cliff Dweller’s Club where we are meeting this evening.

Garland, born as was Taft in 1860, published his Pulitzer Prize winning A Daughter of the Middle Border in 1921. It details his life in Chicago starting in the 1890s including detailed accounts of his relationship with Taft. In 1899 Garland married Taft’s sister Zulime, but not without a struggle. Garland had become aware of and developed a romantic interest in Zulime in the 1890s. When in due course he mentioned this to Taft, who was essentially his best friend, Taft said she was already ‘spoken for.’ Garland, much disappointed, took this at face value and left Chicago for a time to travel in Europe and spend time with his many friends in New York and Boston. Returning he was surprised to find that Zulime was still unattached, and his interest was renewed. It was during the early days of the Eagle’s Nest camp which they all attended in good summer weather. The Heckman’s intervened in an unobtrusive manner, inviting Garland and Zulime to dinners at their home and making sure they were seated next to each other. Long walks in the Eagle’s Nest woods. Long talks. Soon enough Garland and Zulime were engaged and quickly married in a civil ceremony as they left for honeymoon travel in the west.

Taft’s initial objection to this union puzzled me, until I learned more about what good friends he was with Garland, and how close he was to his sister whom he clearly envisioned as his lifetime artistic partner (she, too, had gone to Paris to study art). It then occurred to me that, if your best friend marries your sister, it fundamentally changes your relationship with both of them. They thereafter live in a world which is partially closed to you. Still, Taft and Garland remained good friends. Writing about Taft for a tribute dinner in 1936 Garland says: For more than forty years Lorado Taft and I have argued and exchanged enthusiasms while working together . . . I have never known a more unselfish character, . . . He has been heroically persistent and almost ideally happy in his work.

Not long after these words of tribute were written by Garland, Taft suffered a stroke from which he never fully recovered. He died on October 30, 1936, and on December 10 of that year his ashes were scattered in the Elmwood, IL cemetery. Had I been consulted I would have encouraged that the ashes be placed near Taft’s cabin on the Eagle’s Nest campground. None of Taft’s family or circle of friends seem to have been of conventionally religious focus. Later in life Taft responded to a request then being made of leading Americans by a Florida Baptist minister who was looking to publish a compilation of responses to the question: What Think Ye of Christ? ---

As to his influence upon the world, I think we must acknowledge that it is hard to say whether . . . the total tips the beam on the side of good or evil. I have in mind the religious wars and persecutions, the horrors committed in his name. . . . I have no belief regarding the immortality of the soul. .. . I have no information upon the subject. . . . If the Creator had intended us to know, we should have been informed. If there is a future existence I shall be there; if our dreams are not to be realized, we shall sleep. I have faith enough to trust that all will be well.

There is less published material on Taft than might be expected. The principal sources in book form are these:

1. Lorado in Paris, by Allen Weller, published in 1985 takes Taft from childhood through his Paris years (1880 – 1885) ending as Taft decides to settle in Chicago in 1886. Weller, superb scholar, was for many years Dean of the College of Fine and Applied Arts at the University of Illinois. He worked on a second volume titled Taft – The Chicago Years until his death in 1997 when that work, substantially finished, was given to another scholar to prepare for publication. As far as I can determine, the manuscript has languished in those hands ever since, and the University of Illinois Press denies that it has any publication intentions. But stay tuned.

2. Public Sculptor, Lorado Taft and the Beautification of Chicago, by Timothy Garvey, published in 1988 places primary focus on Taft’s work on Chicago sculptures, especially Fountain of the Great Lakes at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Fountain of Time at the west end of the Midway near the University of Chicago, with emphasis on how these works were conceived, financed, constructed and installed in relation to the capacity and receptivity of the Chicago commercial and artistic communities.

3. Lorado Taft, Sculptor and Citizen, by Ada Bartlett Taft, published in 1946 is a loving and essentially reverential work by Taft’s wife written after his death, as she says written in part to provide some means of making our grandchildren know him and what he stood for.

4. Art and Beauty in the Heartland, by Jan Stilson, published in 2006 is an account of the Eagle’s Nest Camp which firmly places the art colony in the cultural context of its times and the times which preceded it. I have already extolled the virtues of this admirable work.

5. A volume titled The Old Guard and the Avant-Guard, Modernism in Chicago, 1910-1940, edited by Sue Ann Prince published in 1990, with a chapter by Allen Weller titled Lorado Taft, the Ferguson Fund, and the Advent of Modernism. Modernism -- a word and concept that presented great difficulties to Taft. There is a pivotal event over which we cannot linger this evening, and that is the arrival in 1913 at the Art Institute of Chicago of a condensed version of what had in New York been termed the Armory Show. Hundreds of works mostly by European artists which bore little resemblance to what had come before were on display. Weller talks about how disillusioned traditionally-focused Chicago artists like Taft were by this exhibition. It was incontrovertible evidence that all-encompassing change was at hand, and things would never be the same in the world of art. Taft once observed that, as he was looking at a piece of modern sculpture, he stepped backward a few steps to get a better perspective. Soon he found he had reached the doorway to the gallery, and from there he turned and proceeded home.

That’s pretty much all of the formal bibliography on Taft. There is no dedicated website, and yet if you conduct a web search using Taft’s name and almost any other name, place or subject you happen to select, amazing results can appear. This is because he traveled so widely, and interacted with so many people, places and organizations in his time.

When Taft gave public lectures about the history and characteristics of sculpture and the importance of art in public places, he used two basic approaches or combined them. In the so-called clay lectures he spoke while working fresh clay with his hands, first into the head and shoulders of a female, and then into the face of a beautiful young woman. As he spoke he continued to manipulate the clay so that the face of the young woman gradually became more mature, and eventually, decidedly aged. Audiences never tired of these expositions showing how real personages could appear and be altered by a skilled artist as they watched. It makes me think of a television program 30 or so years ago in which an artist painted landscapes using what appeared to be large amounts of paint and huge brushstrokes which were at first meaningless and then morphed into fine landscapes with the addition of a few colors and elements of definition. It seemed magical, just as Taft’s skill with his hands and soft clay did to the spellbound audiences of his day. He delivered the clay lecture, often titled In a Sculptor’s Studio more than 1,500 times in virtually every state in America.

Taft’s second modus operandi involved the use of a device called a stereopticon which can be thought of as a precursor to the slide projector, now eclipsed by the ubiquitous power point projectors. In talking about great historical works in classical sculpture Taft needed to be able to show his audience what he was talking about and the stereopticon was the answer.

Taft’s archival records contain much to shed light on his work as a public lecturer. In most years he gave series of typically free public lectures at the Art Institute of Chicago or University of Chicago for which he would be compensated by the sponsoring institution. But Taft also lectured independently and with the assistance of theatrical agents whose business it was to place lecturers before appropriate audiences. Taft’s career as a public lecturer extended from the late 1800s into his senior years in the 1930s. The details of this aspect of Taft’s life and work have been of particular interest to me as a working musician, taking engagements and fees wherever they may be found. I don’t have exact numbers, but it is my belief that Taft (who was never wealthy but never poor) probably derived a greater portion of his personal income from lecturing than he did from teaching, creating sculpture and related works of art, or scholarly writing. The typical financial arrangement for a lecture involved a flat fee, plus reimbursement of travel, lodging and meals. I see no evidence that he ever earned more than a few hundred dollars from his lectures, and often no more than $200. Taft was clearly devoted to his career as a public lecturer and for many years engaged clipping services to pore through newspapers and other publications which regularly sent to him copies of reports about what he had said and done.

Let’s take a moment to follow the argument in a typical Taft lecture exhorting his audience to be more attentive to the appearance and presence of public art in their communities. It is good to remember that times have changed, and much of what Taft encouraged has come to pass within the past fifty years or so. Taft might not approve of its design, placement or execution, but public art --- serious works in public places --- has come a long way. Here is Taft giving what I will call his standard stump speech:

Two good and sufficient reasons there are why most Americans do not care for sculpture. . . . We enter the museum. Before you is spread the wreckage of the centuries, verily a battlefield covered with fragments of once glorious creations; . . . Meantime the true masterpieces of the past . . . must be represented by plaster casts. . . . Our museums are ashamed of their plaster casts and are trying to get rid of them. It is largely a question of lighting, to which no one pays any attention. . . .

As Americans we have a perfect and inalienable right to our ignorance. Our ancestors . . . were without sculptural tradition. . . It was many a year before even portrait painting was indulged in, while two whole centuries passed before a sculptor appeared. . . . We lack the European traditions of beauty, . . . How few of us use our hands skillfully; how few care to. . . . When the ambition of half of our people is to avoid work with the hands . . . it is indeed a dangerous time for democracy. . . .

The history of sculpture is the story of mankind; . . .Perhaps the old-time Greeks were the most intelligent and the best balanced of all mankind. . . . In the perfection of their architecture and sculpture they have never been approached. . . . The fragments of the sculptures of the Parthenon are the finest things that we possess. . . . [then] . . . Roman art made itself an elaborate coffin, crept in and pulled down the lid for a good long sleep – a slumber of a thousand years. . . . Now, finally, appears the amazing figure which . . . ‘crowns the Renaissance as his dome crowns Saint Peter’s’. No one can read the story of [Michelangelo’s] life and struggles and accomplishment without having a more exalted sense of the potentialities of the human mind. . . .

The French have long claimed to be the most artistic nation of Europe. Art is to them . . . life itself. . . . Never in the world’s history has there been such an example of community enterprise as during the century which gave birth to the cathedrals of Chartres, Paris, Bourges, Amiens and Reims . . . the work of people . . . uniting in an exalted effort to create something beautiful to the glory of God, . . and to the renown of the home city. . . . The nineteenth century made Paris the most beautiful capital in the world. From Taft’s Appreciation of Sculpture (1927).

Taft encouraged young members of his audiences to read about the history of great art, detailing the many works they could expect to find in their school or local public libraries. He exhorted the adults to look at the ugliness within their communities and think how works of simple beauty (not figures of dead people or struggling warriors) in public places could enrich their lives. It is helpful to recall that during much of Taft’s public life urban air was often filled with industrial emissions and coal dust and smoke while city streets could be little more than open-air sewers, especially before the advent of the street car and the automobile.

Taft was clearly motivated by the kind of beauty which the citizens of Paris and many other cities in Europe could take for granted. The only thing his fellow citizens in America needed was a bit more time, motivation and resources to construct their own public places of beauty. They were already surrounded by the beauty of the natural world if they would only take time from their industry to make note of it. He may also have often thought in his public speaking of the beloved Eagle’s Nest community where he and his fellow artists spent so many happy summer days. We may conclude with a few lines from Margaret Fuller’s account of her 1843 visit there. She says:

I should never be tired here, . . .. Here the eye and heart are filled. . . . How happy the Indians must have been here. It is not long since they were driven away, and the ground above and below is full of their traces. . . . I can believe that an Indian brave, accustomed to ramble in such paths, and bathed by such sunbeams, might be mistaken for Apollo. . . .Two of the boldest bluffs are called the Deer’s walk and the Eagle’s Nest. The latter I visited one glorious morning; it was that of the fourth of July and certainly I think I had never felt so happy that I was born in America. . . . I do believe Rome and Florence are suburbs compared to this capital of nature’s art.