His work includes the details on the Nebraska State Capitol building in Lincoln, Nebraska and some of the architectural sculpture and, his most prominent work, the free-standing bronze Atlas (installed 1937) at New York City's Rockefeller Center.
Lawrie was born in Rixdorf, Germany, and came to the United States in 1882 as a young child, settling in Chicago. It was there, at the age of 14, that he began working for the sculptor Richard Henry Park.
In 1892 he had the chance to work for many of the sculptors in Chicago, constructing the "White City" for the World Columbian Exposition of 1893. Following the completion of the work at the Exposition, Lawrie followed the other mostly East Coast artists back east and settled in as an assistant to William Ordway Partridge. The next decade found him working with other established sculptors: St. Gaudens, Philip Martiny, Alexander Phimister Proctor, John William Kitson and others. His work at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St Louis, 1904, under Karl Bitter, the foremost architectural sculptor of the time, allowed Lawrie to further develop both his skills and his reputation as an architectural sculptor.
Collaborations with Cram and Goodhue
It was Lawrie's collaborations with Ralph Adams Cram and Bertram Goodhue that brought him to the forefront of architectural sculptors in America. After the breakup of the Cram, Goodhue firm in 1914, Lawrie continued to work with Goodhue until Goodhue's premature death in 1924, then with his successors.
The Nebraska State Capitol and the Los Angeles Public Library both feature extensive sculptural programs integrated into (rather than applied onto) the surface, massing, spatial grammar and social function of the building. Lawrie's collaborations with Goodhue are arguably the most highly developed example of architectural sculpture in American architectural history.
Commissions related to Goodhue
- the Chapel at West Point, West Point, New York (Cram and Goodhue)
- the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer, New York City (Cram and Goodhue)
- St. Bartholomew's Church (New York), (Cram and Goodhue)
- the reredos at Saint Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue in New York City (Cram and Goodhue)
- the Nebraska State Capitol, Lincoln, Nebraska (Goodhue)
- the Los Angeles Public Library, Los Angeles, California (Goodhue)
- the Rockefeller Chapel at the University of Chicago (Goodhue)
- Trinity English Lutheran Church, Fort Wayne, Indiana (Goodhue)
- large relief panels for the National Academy of Sciences Building in Washington, D.C. (Goodhue)
- Christ Church Cranbrook, in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan (Goodhue)
- the Church of the Heavenly Rest, New York City (Mayers Murray & Phillip)
After Goodhue's death, Lawrie went on to produce important and highly visible work under Raymond Hood at Rockefeller Center in New York City, which included the Atlas in collaboration with Rene Paul Chambellan, By November 1931 Hood made it known that "There has been entirely too much talk about the collaboration of architect, painter and sculptor", and relegated Lawrie to the role of a decorator.
As a result, Lawrie's most recognizable work is not architectural: it is the freestanding Atlas statue on Fifth Avenue at Rockefeller Center, standing 45 feet tall, with a 15-foot figure of the Titan who supports the heavens, supporting an armillary sphere, with a total height of 45 feet. As its unveiling, some critics were reminded of Benito Mussolini, while James Montgomery Flagg suggested that it looked as Mussolini thought he looked. The international character of Streamline Moderne, embraced by Fascism as well as corporate democracy, did not find favor during the Second World War.
Other commissions
- Allegorical relief panels called Courage, Patriotism and Wisdom over the entry doors to United States Senate chamber (done as part of the 1950 Federal-period remodeling of the Senate), Washington, D.C.
- Education Building (a.k.a. Forum Building) in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
- Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rouge, Louisiana
- Peace Memorial at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
- Fidelity Mutual Life Building in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (now part of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the sculptural elements of which include the owl of wisdom, the dog of fidelity, the pelican of charity, the possum of protection, and the squirrel of frugality), architects Zantzinger, Borie and Medary
- Statue of George Washington, National Cathedral, Washington, DC
- Friezes for the Ramsey County Courthouse in Saint Paul, Minnesota
- Two Egyptian bas-reliefs for the 1924 Hale Solar Laboratory in Pasadena, California
- National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and the bronze doors of the John Adams Building at the Library of Congress Annex, both in Washington, D.C.
- Harkness Memorial Tower at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
- Beaumont Tower at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan
- Kirk in the Hills Presbyterian in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan
- the Bok Singing Tower in Mountain Lake, Florida, architects Zantzinger, Borie and Medary
- Designed sculptures for the Brittany American Cemetery and Memorial in Brittany, France executed by Jean Juge of Paris and the French sculptor, Augustine Beggi.
From Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Lawrie
Text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License
| Studied under Augustus Saint-Gaudens
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