EPILOGUE
If you've arrived here by actually plowing through the more than 300 pages of this website, congratulations: As of 2019 it represents the culmination of a combined 134 years of research by three individuals: From 1948 until 2001, T. Perry Wesley, the late Editor Emeritus of The Spencer [Indiana] Evening World, tried to find out all he could about Spencer's famous hometown resident, sculptor E. M. Viquesney and his WWI memorial monument, "The Spirit of the American Doughboy". From 1965 until 2018, my friend the late Earl Goldsmith of The Woodlands, Texas, took up Mr. Wesley's research after visiting him in Spencer. Earl provided much of the information found on these pages. And since 1991, when I first tried to find some information about the little Doughboy table lamp my mother had given to me that bore the sculptor's name, much of the task of keeping the search for E. M. Viquesney alive has fallen to me.
But perhaps I have discovered too much.
In August of 2019 I found the following items, a June 18, 1921 announcement from Friedley-Voshardt Company of Chicago, Illinois, for Viquesney's new sheet bronze statue mentioning the name of the man who actually sculpted it, Paul Mohrmann, head of the company's sculpture department, and his 1923 obituary. Note there is no reference to "The Spirit of the American Doughboy" in the obituary, nor to any WWI monuments. At the time, the company might still have been involved in a copyright infringement lawsuit filed against them in 1922.
Thus I end with the somewhat bittersweet realization that E. M. Viquesney, the man who billed himself as "one of the nation's best-known sculptors", didn't actually sculpt the "The Spirit of the American Doughboy", the statue which rocketed him to national fame overnight. And I suspect the same may be true of the stone and zinc versions made by other companies, although no direct proof of this has turned up yet.
So hats off to you, Paul Mohrmann, and all the other unsung artists, sculptors, and craftspeople whose works made others famous...
But perhaps I have discovered too much.
In August of 2019 I found the following items, a June 18, 1921 announcement from Friedley-Voshardt Company of Chicago, Illinois, for Viquesney's new sheet bronze statue mentioning the name of the man who actually sculpted it, Paul Mohrmann, head of the company's sculpture department, and his 1923 obituary. Note there is no reference to "The Spirit of the American Doughboy" in the obituary, nor to any WWI monuments. At the time, the company might still have been involved in a copyright infringement lawsuit filed against them in 1922.
Thus I end with the somewhat bittersweet realization that E. M. Viquesney, the man who billed himself as "one of the nation's best-known sculptors", didn't actually sculpt the "The Spirit of the American Doughboy", the statue which rocketed him to national fame overnight. And I suspect the same may be true of the stone and zinc versions made by other companies, although no direct proof of this has turned up yet.
So hats off to you, Paul Mohrmann, and all the other unsung artists, sculptors, and craftspeople whose works made others famous...
Les Kopel
October, 2019
October, 2019
|
Left: From The American Artisan & Hardware Record, June 18, 1921. Buried in the text is the startling reference to Paul Mohrman [sic] as the actual sculptor of Viquesney's Doughboy. I can find no later ads or notices mentioning Mr. Mohrmann again. Right: Mr. Mohrmann's 1923 obituary from American Stone Trade, volume 34, page 38. I can find no references to any sculptor named "Chumbray", or what "arsmore" means.
|
