Did You Know (Artemis II)

That Framer, Ylva Callewaert and Sculptor, Bela Lyon Pratt have something in common?

Bela Lyon Pratt (maternal grandfather of Cynthia Kennedy Sam of Annisquam and Cambridge), sculpted this ideal figure of Artemis, also the namesake of Ylva’s frameshop. The photo is of the clay model, completed in 1908, which was then cast in bronze and now resides at the New Britain Museum of Art in New Britain, CT.  That same year Pratt created the gold Indian Head $5 and $2.50 coins known as the “Pratt coins”, which feature an unusual intaglio Indian head, the U.S. mint’s only recessed design in circulation. 

Bela Lyon Pratt (December 11, 1867 – May 18, 1917) was an American sculptor born in Norwich, Connecticut. At 16 Pratt began studying at the Yale University School of Fine Arts.  After graduating from Yale, he enrolled at the Art Students League of New York where he took classes from William Merritt Chase, Kenyon Cox, Francis Edwin Elwell , and most important, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who became his mentor. After a short stint in Saint-Gaudens’ private studio, Pratt traveled to Paris, where he trained with sculptors Henri-Michel-Antoine Chapu and Alexandre Falguière at the École des Beaux-Arts.

In 1892, he returned to the United States to create two large sculptural groups representing The Genius of Navigation for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. He also produced sculptures for the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo in 1901. In 1893, he began a 25-year career as an influential teacher of modeling in the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. During this time, Pratt sculpted a series of busts of Boston’s intellectual community, including Episcopal priest Phillips Brooks (1899, Brooks House, Harvard University), Colonel Henry Lee (1902, Memorial Hall, Harvard University), and Boston Symphony Orchestra founder Henry Lee Higginson (1909, Symphony Hall, Boston). He became an associate of the National Academy in 1900.

A retrospective exhibition of 125 of his sculptures was held at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in the spring of 1918.  Some of his public statues include Statue of Nathaniel Hawthorne in Salem, Massachusetts, Statue of Edward Everett Hale in Boston Public Garden, and Nathan Hale statue at Fort Nathan Hale in New Haven, Connecticut. 

E.J. Lefavour

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