By Bruce Weber
Unknown Photographer
John B. Flannagan, c. 1935
Gelatin silver print
This year marks the one hundredth anniversary of the American sculptor John B. Flannagan’ creation of his majestic sculpture Maverick Horse. In celebration of the occasion this month’s post for Learning Woodstock Art Colony focuses on the artist’s life and career.
I also wanted you to know that I will be lecturing at the Saugerties Public Library on Wednesday evening January 8th at 6 p.m. on Charles Edward Townsend’s painting Catskill Mountains from Barclay Heights, Saugerties, New York, dating from about 1853, which currently hangs in the lobby of the Saugerties Village Hall. Overlook Mountain in Woodstock looms loftily in the distance while a pristine view of the Esopus Creek in Saugerties predominates the foreground.
The life of the artist and his landscape will be explored in the context of a discussion of the development of Saugerties in the nineteenth century and the extraordinary role played by Henry Barclay. This is my initial venture into the 19th century art and history of Saugerties, and I hope you can attend,
Registration is requred: 845-246-4317 x2. The lecture will also be available to view live on ZOOM. To register for the ZOOM presentation email bruweber942@gmail.com. The ZOOM is limited to
an audience of 100.
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John B. Flannagan was born in Fargo, North Dakota in 1895.He was the eldest son of Martin Flannagan, an itinerant police reporter, and Margaret McDonald Flannagan, a school teacher. Flannagan’s father died when he was six years old, following which his family experienced years of financial hardship. Flannagan’s mother was forced to place him and his brother in an orphanage while she trained for more remunerative work. His interest in art arose when he was a child and began to whittle. During his teens, he attended a vocational school where he took his first drawing class.
In 1915, Flannagan moved to Minneapolis and began to take classes at the Minneapolis School of Art, where he studied painting with Robert Koehler. His fellow students included his future neighbors at the Maverick art colony in West Hurley Harry Gottlieb and Arnold and Lucille Blanch. According to another student, Wanda Gag, Flannagan was disoriented, taciturn and unsmiling as a student, and spent much of his time reading Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.(1) During the course of his life Flannagan suffered from alcoholism and mental instability.
Arthur B. Davies, c. 1907
After finishing art school Flannagan joined the United States Merchant Marines, and over the next several years he travelled intermittently to Europe and South America. In 1922, Flannagan moved to New York City to pursue an artistic career but soon found himself without employment and a place to sleep, and also experiencing serious issues with alcohol. The journalist William George Tinckom-Fernandez discovered him passed out on a park bench, and introduced him to his friend Dr. Virginia Merriweather Davies, the wife of painter Arthur B. Davies. Dr. Davies hired Flannagan to work as a handyman on the couple’s farm in Congers, New York, where her husband became Flannagan’s mentor.
John B. Flannagan (1895-1942)
Relief for Wax Painting, 1922
Wood and paint
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Davies encouraged Flannagan to take up carving and to experiment with wax painting for which he created reliefs in wood and wax. He soon moved from creating carved assemblage’s in wood, and wax paintings on board, to carving works of sculpture. Flannagan received his first professional break in 1923 when he was invited by Davies to exhibit alongside him and a group of established artists at Montross Gallery in New York City. Art historian Katherine Rangoon Doyle has speculated that it is “likely that Flannagan’s emerging sensibility as an artist was very much shaped by Davies.”(2)
Jessie Tarbox-Beals (1870-1942)
Patchin Place, c. 1915
Gelatin silver print
John B. Flannagan (1895-1942)
Oaken Chest, 1924-1925
Conner Rosenkranz
John B. Flannagan (1895-1942)
Dining Table, 1923-1924
In 1924, Flannagan left Congers and moved to Patchin Place in Greenwich Village, where he became friendly with numerous writers and artists, including e. e. cummings, Djuna Barnes and Berenice Abbott. He met and became involved with Florence Rollins, who suggested that he carve wood furniture as a means of accruing an income. Flannagan carved reliefs on the surfaces of furniture, some of which featured images of animals.
John B. Flannagan (1895-1942)
Sisters, 1924-1925
Mahagony relief
Whitney Museum of American Art
John B, Flannagan (1895-1942)
Praying Woman, 1924
Rosewood
John B. Flannagan (1895-1942)
Cathedral, 1926
Walnut
St. Louis Art Museum
Flannagan became swept up in the revival of wood carving that caught on in popularity among native artists in the 1920s. He became a major exponent of direct carving, which was regarded as an avant-garde aesthetic during the decade. Initially, Flannagan carved solely in wood. In accord with his desire to keep his materials diversified he carved in walnut, mahogany, rosewood, violet wood, satinwood, Hazelwood, tulipwood and ebony.
Constantin Brancusi
The Kiss, 1907-1908
Limestone
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Eric Gill (1882-1940)
Contortionist, 1913
Bath stone
During the 1920s international interest developed in direct carving in stone, marble, wood and other materials. The art historian Daniel Robbins noted that the form initially developed in Europe in large part as a reaction to the art of Auguste Rodin, and at first “was a theoretical and technical argument between proponents of cutting directly into a material and modeling in clay . . . .”(3) Among the important sculptors to work as direct carvers in Europe were Constantine Brancusi and Eric Gill, who in the early years of the 20th century began experimenting with techniques of direct carving, and emphasized pared down simplicity in their work.
Unknown Photographer
Eric Gill at Work on the Calvary Group,
St. Thomas the Apostle Church, London, 1933
Gelatin silver print
The direct carving movement gained momentum in the United States after 1920 and flourished till mid-century. Direct carvers initially grabbed the attention of American artists with Brancusi’s entries in the Armory Show of 1913. Sculptors such as Robert Laurent and William Zorach would begin to adopt its principles, and work directly on a piece of stone or wood, as opposed to a clay or a wax model, and then follow up work with foundries or professional carvers to reproduce the image in bronze or marble via industrial or mechanical means.
William Zorach (1887-1966)
The Artist’s Daughter, 1930
Marble
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Robert Laurent (1890-1970)
L’Indifferente, 1920-1921
Caen stone
Robert Lauent (1890-1970)
Head with Hand, 1915
Walnut
Direct carvers upended academic tradition in the quest of “truth to materials,” believing that the inherent properties of the raw material should remain apparent in the finished work of art. Many viewed nature as a collaborator, and selected materials with distinct physical properties, such as veins in stone or burls in wood, and allowed these elements to suggest designs and shapes. Flannagan preserved the integrity of the material as a compact mass, and its shape helped determine the subject. His aim was to produce a sculpture “with such ease, freedom and simplicity that it hardly feels carved, but rather to have always been that way.”(4)
Photographer Unknown
Mary and John Frederick
Mowbray-Clarke, 1910
Gelatin silver print
Nyack Local History Collection
John Frederick Mowbray-Clarke (1869-1953)
Musician, 1915
Plaster
From 1924 to 1929, Flannagan alternated stays in New York City, New City, New York, and Woodstock. He was part of an artistic circle in New City known as the Brocken, which was the name of the studio and farm of Mary and John Frederick Mowbray-Clark. The Mowbray-Clarks were influenced by the writings of the British Socialist and William Morris disciple Arthur J. Penty, and established Brocken as a social center for the exchange of political ideas ranging from socialism to anarchism, and as a place for communication between free spirits. Davies paid regular visits to Brocken, which was a short distance to his house. In 1925, Florence Rollins bought land in New City, and the rural estate provided Flannagan with a place to work and remain at peace.
Alfred A. Cohn (1897-1972)
Maverick Horse, c. 1925
(Original Location)
John B. Flannagan (1895-1942)
Maverick Horse, 1924
Maverick Concert Hall
Flannagan was drawn to Woodstock by his former Minneapolis classmates Harry Gottlieb and Arnold and Lucille Blanch. Hervey White’s horse Roany recently had died, and he rented the vacant stable to Flannagan. In the summer of 1924 he carved the famous Maverick horse from an 18-foot chestnut log. Flannagan responded to Hervey White’s request to hew the trunk of a chestnut tree that had been growing on a hillside above the Maverick Concert Hall into the symbol of his colony. He carved the piece almost entirely with an axe, and used a gouge for small details.
Original Location of Maverick Horse
Alfred A. Cohn (1897-1972)
Maverick Horse, c. 1925
(Original Location)
Interior, Maverick Concert Hall, 2018
Detail of Head, Maverick Horse, 1924
For decades the sculpture stood at the foot of the entrance road to the Maverick Concert Hall. Its placement moved one author to refer to the horse as “the guardian of [the] large tract of wooded hillside land . . . which bears the name of Maverick.”(5) The piece was then stored for twenty years to protect it. In 1979, the sculpture was put on view inside the concert hall, where it remains. The base supports an ovoid shaped form, reportedly representing the head of Maverick founder Hervey White, from which two vertical arms sprout and hold the horse aloft.(6)
The artist Hannah Small said that Flanagan proceeded to get drunk when the piece was completed. Flannagan later related that the piece’s completion was “the occasion of the most sincere and honest criticism I’ve ever had when a native said, ‘Well, I thought I could handle an axe but I wouldn’t try that for a thousand dollars, that’s some chore.”(7) Flannagan had a major impact on Small and her fellow Maverick sculptors Eugenie Gershoy and Raoul Hague, all of whom followed his example in working as direct carvers. He was also friendly with the sculptor Nat Werner who rented a small cottage near Zena Road in Woodstock in the early 1930s, and went on expeditions with Flannagan in search of stone that suggested organic forms. He also went on excursions in search of suitable stones in the area with the artist Wendell Jones and folklorist Sam Eskin.
John B, Flannagan (1895-1942)
Squirrel, c. 1932
Brownstone
Norton Museum of Art
John B. Flannagan (1895-1942)
Ram, 1929
Fieldstone
Norton Museum of Art
John B. Flannagan (1895-1942)
Elephant, 1926
Granite
Portland Museum of Art
In 1926, Flannagan turned his attention from wood to carving in stone. He turned to the material as a result of economic necessity as he was not able to afford anything more than the stones if the field. Flannagan struggled to locate stones and boulders from fields and streams that were fully to his liking. He found stones upstate different from those that he discovered around New City and hardly any suitable for carving, especially on the Maverick. The stones “very rudeness” seemed to him to be especially “in harmony with a simple direct statement.”(8)
John B. Flannagan (1895-1942)
Ram, 1929
Fieldstone
Norton Museum of Art
Aztec, Mexico
Coiled Serpent, 15th-early 16th century
Stone
Metropolitan Museum of Art
When inspired Flannagan worked night and day without stopping. He was influenced by the indigenous art of the Aztec, Mayan and Inca civilizations in Central and South America, and the medieval art of Europe. Art writer, curator and art dealer Carl Zigrosser noted that Flannagan was sympathetic to all living things, and formed an intimate connection in his art with all the elements and forces of nature. He referred to him as “essentially a mystic; one who aligned himself with spirit rather than mechanism.”(9) He further remarked that Flannagan felt a work of sculpture “should never be finished but always be in a state of becoming.”(10)
John B. Flannagan (1895-1942)
Frog, 1938
Sandstone
Detroit Institute of Art
Paul Fiene (1899-1949)
Pelican, n.d.
Grace Mott Johnson (1882-1967)
Chimpanzees, 1912
Woodstock Artists Association and Museum
Wilhelm Hunt Diederich (1884-1953)
Fighting Cocks Firescreen, c. 1925
Carl Walters (1883-1955)
Cat in Tall Grass, 1939
Flannagan sculpted heads, figures, and animals. He joined Paul Fiene, Grace Mott Johnson, Hunt Diederich, and Carl Walters as part of an outstanding group of sculptors working in the Woodstock area who were devoted to depicting animal subjects in a bounty of materials, styles, and expressions (an exhibition I’d love to curate). His interest in depicting animals evolved out of his personal “protest against the universal narcissistic use of the human figure as the only graphic symbol.”(11) Art historian and critic W. R. Valentiner wrote that “The poorest creatures of the fields, the frog, the snake, the grasshopper, are as important to Flannagan as man.”(12)
John B. Flannagan (1895-1942)
Snake, 1938
Ink
Conner Rosenkranz
John B. Flannagan (1895-1942)
Snake, 1938
Limestone
Flannagan’s simple line drawings frequently provided the genesis for creating new works. He considered preparatory drawings to be “much like doing one’s thinking on paper and then carving the conclusion. I prefer to think the thing out first and last in stone or the medium for which it was attended.”(13) He sometimes came up with ideas for new works by looking through issues of Life, Look, and National Geographic. He only used models for study purposes, and would pose the model for a minute or two. Sometime he made sketches and diagrams in order to work out the proportions and scale for pieces that he was working on.
John B. Flannagan (1895-1942)
Wildcat, c. 1926-1930
Stone
Metropolitan Museum of Art
John B. Flannagan (1895-1942)
Sleeping Cat, 1932-1933
Granite
Jordon Schnitzer Museum of Art,
University of Oregon
John B. Flannagan (1895-1942)
Pelican, 1941
Stone
Portland Museum of Art
Flannagan aimed to “create a plastic idiom alive as the spoken word,” to create sculptures “as direct and swift in feeling as a drawing,” and “with such ease, freedom and simplicity that it hardly seems carved but to endure always.”(14) His works are varied in shape. In mid-career he experimented with circular forms, spheroid, rhomboids, and irregularly elongated forms with rounded edges. These sculptures can be placed flat or upright, or be balanced loosely on a round curve. Flannagan consistently sought to preserve the integrity of the stone as a compact mass. He never smoothed the stone or altered its natural reflections. The pared down simplicity of his work aligns him with Constantin Brancusi.
John B. Flannagan (1895-1942)
Figure of Dignity, Irish
Mountain Goat, 1932
Granite and cast aluminum
Metropolitan Museum of Art
John B. Flannagan (1895-1942)
Mother and Child, 1932-1933
Granite
Frances Lehman Loeb
Art Center, Vassar College
Flannagan’s later activity in Woodstock was broken up by his visits to Ireland over the course of 1930-1933. His initial stay in his ancestral country was spurred by his art dealer Erhard Weyhe who paid his expenses for a year. While in Ireland Flannagan utilized stones he found in the fields, and along the shore on the west coast of the country. He closely identified with his Irish heritage, viewing himself as a scoffer who saw life mostly “through the bottom of a glass.”(15) During his initial trip to Ireland his heavy drinking motivated his wife Grace and baby to return alone to America. His Maverick colleague Harry Gottlieb visited him at this time and wired Weyhe that he needed to provide Flannagan with the funds ro return home. After his second trip to Ireland he voluntarily agreed to enter the Bloomingdale Hospital in White Plains, New York. The sculptor was released in mid-1935 and spent the summer in Woodstock, where he carved several large figural pieces that were shown the following year at Weyhe.
Tomas Penning in Highwoods Studio,
c. 1948
Penning Family Archives
Tomas Penning (1909-1982)
Phoenix, 1941
Bluestone
Woodstock School of Art
Tomas Penning (1909-1982)
Hippopotamus, 1941
Bluestone
Woodstock School of Art
LDuring his stays in Woodstock from 1935 through 1941, Flannagan occasionally worked in bluestone. He was possibly inspired to work in bluestone by Tomas Penning, who was an outspoken advocate for bluestone as a material for sculpture and local architecture, and with whom Flannagan stayed in Saugerties in the summer of 1936.(16) Flannagan’s use of bluestone was remarked upon by the historian, sociologist, and writer Lewis Mumford, who commented in an article in the New Yorker of March 1936 that “He works in humbler materials – a coarse Irish granite and a sandstone, to say nothing of that fine Hudson bluestone of which paving blocks used to be made.”(17)
John B. Flannagan (1895-1942)
The New One, 1935
Bluestone
Minneapolis Museum of Art
John B. Flannagan (1895-1942)
Jonah and the Whale
-Rebirth Motif, 1937
Bluestone
Brooklyn Museum
Among Flannagan’s group of works in bluestone is Jonah and the Whale – Rebirth Motif of 1937 - one of his occasional treatments of a biblical theme. Flannagan found the heavy slab of bluestone in 1935, and was attracted to its powerful silhouette. He later realized that its shape was suitable for a whale, and that he merely needed to slightly accentuate the outlines. In the center he incised the form of the crouching figure of Jonah, picturing him in the belly of the whale.
Review of Flannagan Exhibition at Bard
Woodstock Artist Association Archives
John B. Flannagan (1895-1942)
Kid Licking Its Back (Goat), 1930-1931
Granite
In the autumn of 1937, Flannagan had a solo exhibition across the Hudson River from Woodstock at the Orient Gallery at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson. The exhibition may have been arranged with the assistance of Penning, who at this time was teaching stone carving at the school. The show consisted almost entirely of stones Flannagan found in local fields, stream beds and quarries. In Kid Licking its Back, the texture of the rough field stone alludes to the wooly coat of the bay goat. The shape resembles a figure 8 turned on its side.
Unknown Photographer
John B. Flannagan, c. 1935
Gelatin silver print
In late 1936, Flannagan had an automobile accident which resulted in one of his legs being in a cast for a year. Three years later he was struck by a car in Washington Square. A series of operations failed to alleviate the effects of the accident, which forced him to relearn basic motor skills as well as how to speak, and resulted in partial blindness. He was forbidden by his doctor to carve but he continued to do so, despite the fact that it caused severe pain. At this time, Flannagan had some of his works cast in bronze. His final work, titled Beginning, was cast in bronze, and depicts a nude female seated upon the ground with legs outspread and a newborn infant between them.
Unknown Photographer
John B. Flannagan, c. 1935
Gelatin silver print
Installation Photographs,
Flannagan Retrospective Exhibition,
Museum of Modern Art
MoMA Arhives
In early 1942, Flannagan committed suicide by gassing himself in his New York City studio. He was buried in Calgary Cemetery in Long Island City. In late 1942, Flannagan’s work was the subject of a highly acclaimed retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. In his review of the exhibition the art critic, and future champion of Abstract Expressionism,
Clement Greenberg, lauded him as the best native sculptor working in the United States.(18) Surprisingly, Flannagan has not been the subject of a major retrospective since the showing
at MoMA.
(1) Gag is quoted in John P. Murphy, “Back to the Garden: The Woodstock Artists’ Colony,” Ph.D. dissertation, Northwestern University, 2017, pp. 201-202. The author devotes the excellent chapter “John B. Flannagan: Image in the Rock” (pp. 200-230) to the sculptor.
(2) Kathleen Rangoon Doyle, “John Flannagan (1895-1942): A Reexamination of His Life and Work,” Ph.D. dissertation, Graduate School of the City University of New York, 2004, p. 56.
(3) Daniel Robbins, “Statues to Sculpture from the Nineties to the Thirties,”200 Years of American Sculpture (New York: David R. Godine Publisher, in association with the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1976). p. 15.
(4) Carl Zigrosser, “John B. Flannagan,” essay in John B. Flannagan (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1942), p. 9.
(5) Walt Wandell, “Hervey White is Portrayed Hewn from the Front,” The Woodstock Press,
May 22, 1942, p. 6.
(6) Interview with Lucille Blanch, Striebel-Gaede Archives, Center for Photography at Woodstock, n.p.
(7) Flannagan is quoted in Dennis Drogseth, “Before the Bird,” Woodstock Times, Juen 28, 1979, p. 14.
(8) Flannagan is quoted in Zigrosser, p. 9.
(9) Ibid., p. 10.
(10) Ibid., p. 11.
(11) Letter no. 46, Flannagan, Boston, to Mr. F. E. Hyslop, Jr., Department of Agriculture, Pennsylvania State College, December 26, 1939.
(12) W. R. Valentiner, “John Flannagan: Return to the Rock,” Art News 41 (November 1, 1942): 16.
(13) Flannagan is quoted in Zigrosser, p. 13.
(14) Ibid., p. 9.
(15) Dictionary of American Biography, suppl. 3, 1941-1945 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, c. 1973), p. 278.
(16) For mention of Flannagan’s visit to trip to Penning’s home see The Letters of John B. Flannagan (New York: Curt Valentin, 1942), p. 36.
(17) Lewis Mumford, “The Art Galleries,” The New Yorker 19 (March 7, 1936), p. 37.
(18) Clement Greenberg, “Art,” The Nation CLV (November 14, 1942): 522.
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