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The Cornish Art Colony (or Cornish Artists’ Colony, or Cornish Colony) was a popular
art colony An art colony, also known as an artists' colony, can be defined two ways. Its most liberal description refers to the organic congregation of artists in towns, villages and rural areas, often drawn by areas of natural beauty, the prior existence o ...
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 contained a ...
from about 1895 through the years of World War I. 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 The Connecticut River is the longest river in the New England region of the United States, flowing roughly southward for through four states. It rises 300 yards (270 m) south of the U.S. border with Quebec, Canada, and discharges at Long Islan ...
to
Mount Ascutney Mount Ascutney is a mountain in the U.S. state of Vermont. At , it is the second-highest peak in Windsor County. (The highest peak in the county is Gillespie Peak in the Joseph Battell Wilderness.) Mount Ascutney is a monadnock that rises abr ...
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 sculptor of the Beaux-Arts generation who embodied the ideals of the American Renaissance. From a French-Irish family, Saint-Gaudens was raised in New York City, he trave ...
. 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 The Art Students League of New York is an art school at 215 West 57th Street in Manhattan, New York City, New York. The League has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists. Although artists may stu ...
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 Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park in Cornish, New Hampshire, preserves the home, gardens, and studios of Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848–1907), one of America's foremost sculptors. This was his summer residence from 1885 to 1897, his perman ...
. 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 Windsor is a town in Windsor County, Vermont, United States. As the "Birthplace of Vermont", the town is where the Constitution of Vermont was adopted in 1777, thus marking the founding of the Vermont Republic, a sovereign state until 1791, when ...
and
Plainfield, New Hampshire Plainfield is a town in Sullivan County, New Hampshire, United States. At the time of the 2020 census, the town had a population of 2,459. The town is home to the Helen Woodruff Smith Bird Sanctuary and Annie Duncan State Forest. The village of P ...
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 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 George de Forest Brush (September 28, 1855 – April 24, 1941) was an American painter and Georgist. In collaboration with his friend, the artist Abbott H. Thayer, he made contributions to military camouflage, as did his wife, aviator and artist M ...
, painter * Winston Churchill, American novelist *
Kenyon Cox Kenyon Cox (October 27, 1856 – March 17, 1919) was an American painter, illustrator, muralist, writer, and teacher. Cox was an influential and important early instructor at the Art Students League of New York. He was the designer of the League ...
, painter and muralist *
Thomas Dewing Thomas Wilmer Dewing (May 4, 1851November 5, 1938) was an American painter working at the turn of the 20th century. Schooled in Paris, Dewing was noted for his figure paintings of aristocratic women. He was a founding member of the Ten American ...
, painter *
Marie Dressler Marie Dressler (born Leila Marie Koerber, November 9, 1868 – July 28, 1934) was a Canadian stage and screen actress, comedian, and early silent film and Depression-era film star. In 1914, she was in the first full-length film comedy. She ...
, actress * Isadora Duncan, dancer *
Arthur Farwell Arthur Farwell (April 23, 1872 – January 20, 1952) was an American composer, conductor, educationalist, lithographer, esoteric savant, and music publisher. Interested in American Indian music, he became associated with the Indianist movemen ...
, composer *
Barry Faulkner Barry Faulkner (full name: Francis Barrett Faulkner; July 12, 1881 – October 27, 1966) was an American artist primarily known for his murals. During World War I, he and sculptor Sherry Edmundson Fry organized artists for training as camouflage ...
, muralist and mosaicist *
Daniel Chester French Daniel Chester French (April 20, 1850 – October 7, 1931) was an American sculptor of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, best known for his 1874 sculpture '' The Minute Man'' in Concord, Massachusetts, and his 1920 monum ...
, sculptor * Henry Brown Fuller, painter * Lucia Fairchild Fuller, painter *
Learned Hand Billings Learned Hand ( ; January 27, 1872 – August 18, 1961) was an American jurist, lawyer, and judicial philosopher. He served as a federal trial judge on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York from 1909 to 1924 a ...
, judge *
Percy MacKaye Percy MacKaye (1875–1956) was an American dramatist and poet. Biography MacKaye was born in New York City into a theatrical family. His father, Steele MacKaye, was a popular actor, playwright, and producer, while his mother, Mary, wrote a dra ...
, dramatist * Paul Manship, sculptor *
Rose Standish Nichols Rose Standish Nichols (1872–1960) was an American landscape architect from Boston, Massachusetts. Nichols worked for some 70 clients in the United States and abroad. Collaborators included David Adler, Mac Griswold, Howard Van Doren Shaw, and ...
, garden designer, writer, and activist * Maxfield Parrish, painter and muralist * Stephen Parrish, painter and etcher *
Maxwell Perkins William Maxwell Evarts "Max" Perkins (September 20, 1884 – June 17, 1947) was an American book editor, best remembered for discovering authors Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, and Thomas Wolfe. Early life and ...
, editor *
Charles A. Platt Charles Adams Platt (October 16, 1861 – September 12, 1933) was a prominent American architect, garden designer, and artist of the "American Renaissance" movement. His garden designs complemented his domestic architecture. Early career Pain ...
, architect and garden designer *
Frederic Remington Frederic Sackrider Remington (October 4, 1861 – December 26, 1909) was an American painter, illustrator, sculptor, and writer who specialized in the genre of Western American Art. His works are known for depicting the Western United Sta ...
, painter, sculptor and author *
Augustus Saint-Gaudens Augustus Saint-Gaudens (; March 1, 1848 – August 3, 1907) was an American sculptor of the Beaux-Arts generation who embodied the ideals of the American Renaissance. From a French-Irish family, Saint-Gaudens was raised in New York City, he trave ...
, sculptor * Louis St. Gaudens, sculptor and Augustus Saint-Gaudens' brother *
Everett Shinn Everett Shinn (November 6, 1876 – May 1, 1953) was an American painter and member of the urban realist Ashcan School. Shinn started as a newspaper illustrator in Philadelphia, demonstrating a rare facility for depicting animated movement, a ...
, painter and illustrator *
Florence Scovel Shinn Florence Scovel Shinn (September 24, 1871 in Camden, New Jersey – October 17, 1940) was an American artist and book illustrator who became a New Thought spiritual teacher and metaphysical writer in her middle years.Gatlin, Linda; Edwards, Rita"P ...
, illustrator and writer *
Ellen Biddle Shipman Ellen Biddle Shipman (November 5, 1869 – March 27, 1950) was an American landscape architect known for her formal gardens and lush planting style. Along with Beatrix Farrand and Marian Cruger Coffin, she dictated the style of the time and stron ...
, landscape architect *
Bessie Potter Vonnoh Bessie Potter Vonnoh (August 17, 1872 – March 8, 1955) was an American sculptor best known for her small bronzes, mostly of domestic scenes, and for her garden fountains. Her stated artistic objective, as she told an interviewer in 1925, was to ...
, sculptor *
Robert Vonnoh Robert William Vonnoh (September 17, 1858 – 28 December 1933) was an American Impressionist painter known for his portraits and landscapes. He traveled extensively between the American East Coast and France, more specifically the artists ...
, painter *
Woodrow Wilson Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856February 3, 1924) was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. A member of the Democratic Party, Wilson served as the president of ...
, American president * William Zorach, sculptor *
Willard Metcalf Willard Leroy Metcalf (July 1, 1858March 9, 1925) was an American painter born in Lowell, Massachusetts. He studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and later attended Académie Julian, Paris. After early figure-painting and il ...
, painter *
Witter Bynner Harold Witter Bynner (August 10, 1881 – June 1, 1968), also known by the pen name Emanuel Morgan, was an American poet and translator. He was known for his long residence in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and association with other literary figures ther ...
, poet


See also

* New Hampshire Historical Marker No. 134: The Cornish Colony


References


External links


AskART: Cornish ColonyCornish Colony Museum''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