The Cornish Art Colony (or Cornish Artists’ Colony, or Cornish Colony) was a popular art colony centered in

Cornish, New Hampshire Cornish is a town in Sullivan County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 1,616 at the 2020 census. Cornish has four covered bridges. Each August, it is home to the Cornish Fair. History The town was granted in 1763 and containe ...

, from about 1895 through the years of

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

. Attracted by the natural beauty of the area, about 100 artists, sculptors, writers, designers, and politicians lived there either full-time or during the summer months. With views across the Connecticut River Valley to Mount Ascutney in Vermont, the bucolic scenery was considered to resemble that of an Italian landscape. The central figure of the Cornish Colony was

Augustus Saint-Gaudens Augustus Saint-Gaudens (; March 1, 1848 – August 3, 1907) was an American sculpture, sculptor of the Beaux-Arts architecture, Beaux-Arts generation who embodied the ideals of the American Renaissance. Saint-Gaudens was born in Dublin to an Iris ...

. Beginning around 1885, Augustus attracted a summer colony of artists that grew into a single extended social network. Some were related, some were friends, some were promising students from the Art Students League of New York that Saint-Gaudens had co-founded, and some were Saint-Gaudens' assistants who developed significant careers of their own. After his death in 1907 it slowly dissipated. His house and gardens are now preserved as Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site. Though the colony's name referred to its social center in the village of Cornish, geographically it was spread out over the villages of Windsor, Vermont, and Plainfield, New Hampshire, as well. Windsor was the mailing address for the entire area and the arrival point of most of the colonists, who usually came from

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

by train.

People associated with the Cornish Colony

The following people are known to have been part of the colony: * Adeline Pond Adams, poet and art historian * Herbert Adams, sculptor * Ethel Barrymore, actress * George de Forest Brush, painter * Witter Bynner, poet *

Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British statesman, military officer, and writer who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 (Winston Churchill in the Second World War, ...

, American novelist * Kenyon Cox, painter and muralist * Herbert Croly, author and architect * Thomas Dewing, painter *

Marie Dressler Leila Marie Koerber (November 9, 1868 – July 28, 1934), known professionally as Marie Dressler, was a Canadian-born stage- and screen-actress and comedian, popular in Cinema of the United States, Hollywood in early silent film, silent an ...

, actress * Isadora Duncan, dancer * Arthur Farwell, composer * Barry Faulkner, muralist and mosaicist * Daniel Chester French, sculptor * Henry Brown Fuller, painter * Lucia Fairchild Fuller, painter * Learned Hand, judge * Percy MacKaye, dramatist * Paul Manship, sculptor * Rose Standish Nichols, garden designer, writer, and activist * Maxfield Parrish, painter and muralist * Stephen Parrish, painter and etcher * Maxwell Perkins, editor * Charles A. Platt, architect and garden designer * Frederic Remington, painter, sculptor and author *

, sculptor * Louis St. Gaudens, sculptor and Augustus Saint-Gaudens' brother * Everett Shinn, painter and illustrator * Florence Scovel Shinn, illustrator and writer * Ellen Biddle Shipman, landscape architect * Bessie Potter Vonnoh, sculptor * Robert Vonnoh, painter *

Woodrow Wilson Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856February 3, 1924) was the 28th president of the United States, serving from 1913 to 1921. He was the only History of the Democratic Party (United States), Democrat to serve as president during the Prog ...

, American president * William Zorach, sculptor * Willard Metcalf, painter

References

External links

AskART: Cornish ColonyCornish Colony Museum
archive copy of website
''Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Master Sculptor''
exhibition catalog fully online as PDF from The Metropolitan Museum of Art {{Authority control American artist groups and collectives Art in New Hampshire Sullivan County, New Hampshire Cornish, New Hampshire

People associated with the Cornish Colony

See also

References

External links