Reduced
to Rubble: James Novelli's Victory
by Josephine Murphy
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For almost eighty years, a sculpture by James Novelli (1885-1940) entitled Victory stood diligently on its pedestal in Saratoga Square Park in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. The statue depicted a female with her right arm raised holding an olive branch and her left arm holding a shield inscribed with the phrase "E pluribus unum" - Latin for "out of many, one."1 Commissioned in 1921, the sculpture was designed as a war memorial to commemorate the young soldiers of the neighborhood who had sacrificed their lives defending the country during World War I. No stranger to vandalism, the bronze plaques which once accompanied the statue, containing the names of the Brooklyn military personnel killed, were stolen in 1974; but final defeat came, under darkness, in the early morning hours of April 21, 2000, when thieves using a blow torch ruthlessly removed the 1,000 pound statue from its 10-foot-wide base.2
Two career criminals were soon apprehended, but unfortunately not before the sculpture had been chopped up and its parts sold as scrap metal. Detectives were able to recover the head of the sculpture and about 300 other pieces, in preparation for being melted down. The seven-foot-tall figure of a woman would have been worth only about $300.00 as scrap. The original price of the statue was $5,500.00, and in today's market it would cost more than $100,000.00 to replace.3 Victory was cast by Roman Bronze Works in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, which produced many turn-of-the-century bronze sculptures and monuments, including some at Rockefeller Center, until it recently went out of business.4
But who was James Novelli? What can history tell us about the man who designed this now lost sculpture? The information which I uncovered both disturbed and intrigued me. I was transported into a unique period of history, a time between the great World Wars; a score of years filled with a multitude of extremes: prosperity and depression, peace and anxiety, jubilation and sorrow - in a similar manner these disparities would be echoed in the life and work of the artist.
James Novelli was an Italian-American born in Sulmona, a province of Aquila, Italy, in 1885. When he was five, his family immigrated to America and, like many Italian-Americans, settled in New York City. While a young student at Public School 23 he would take chalk from the classroom blackboard and create sidewalk drawings. Impressed by his skills and natural abilities, both his parents and his teachers encouraged his artistic talents. As a result, in 1903 when he was eighteen years old, he returned to Italy and studied under Giulio Monteverde, Ettore Ferrari, and Silvio Sbricoli.5 While still a student he won honorable mention at the International Exposition held in Paris in 1906. He graduated from the Royal Academy of Rome in 1908.
Upon Novelli's return to New York after his graduation, it soon became apparent that he would be able to make a good living in his chosen field of art. From the end of the Civil War through the turn of the century there was an abundance of activity and funds given toward public sculptural commissions. Having studied with Monteverde, a master sculptor who obtained numerous commissions for monuments celebrating national heroes and funerary memorials,6 Novelli was well trained and prepared to give the public what it wanted. It wasn't long before he became recognized as a sculptor and his reputation expanded beyond the New York area. An ample number of lucrative commissions began coming in from cities throughout the United States.
By the end of World War I there was a renewed nation-wide demand for memorials and monuments. The country was heading into the 1920s and money was plentiful. As is always the case in a prosperous economy, people had the money to indulge in the luxury of the fine arts. A new class of people emerged; newly famous celebrities, actors, and musicians, came to be regarded - and regarded themselves - as figures important enough to warrant portraits. At the same time there arose a large number of wealthy patrons who could afford sculpture and who desired to embellish the gardens on their private estates in a similar fashion to the public parks. Novelli was an accomplished artist in this flourishing market, with a promising future before him. In 1922 he was elected to the membership of the National Sculpture Society, at a time when the honorary president of the Society was Daniel Chester French. The Exhibition of American Sculpture Guide: April 14th -August 1st of 1923 notes that he exhibited three of his works along with the notable sculptor Frederick W. Mac Monnies, and from April to October of 1929, Novelli exhibited in Contemporary American Sculpture: the California Palace of the Legion of Honor at Lincoln Park in San Francisco.
Since its inception in the 1890s, and for decades to follow, members of the National Sculpture Society were the most important sculptors at work in the United States. It was the aim of the National Sculpture Society to "spread the knowledge of good sculpture; ...and encourage the production of ideal sculpture for the household and museums", and certainly to "...promote the decoration of public buildings, squares and parks with sculpture of high class."7 The Society provided sculptors with the opportunity for work and the chance to establish their reputations. Members consistently secured the best and richest commissions available, and their works dominated public spaces throughout the 1920s.8 Novelli was also a member of the Architectural League of New York. Even after the First World War often a sculptor's livelihood depended on the favor of architects for commissions. The goal of the Architectural League was to promote the ideal of mutual enrichment through collaboration. Muralists, sculptors and many other artists were invited to become members and their annual exhibition included sections for landscape, architecture, painting, sculpture and the decorative arts.9 With the exception of 1926, Novelli displayed his sculptural works at the League's annual exhibitions from 1922 through 1928. At the Thirty-Eighth Annual Exhibition, in 1923, a set of his bronze mausoleum doors in Calvary Cemetery in New York won the Henry O. Avery Prize for sculpture.10
As the pendulum swings, so does the American economy, and the Great Depression was just waiting in the wings. In 1930, Novelli was dropped from the membership of the National Sculpture Society11 and there was no reason given on his membership card (present-day opinion holds that he either simply let his dues expire or was not interested in renewing his membership). Very little is mentioned about him or his works after that date. He maintained his studio at 400 West Twenty-Third Street in Manhattan through the lean years, but was forced to give it up in 1939. Despondent over lack of new commissions and alarmed about war conditions in Europe, Novelli took his own life at the age of fifty-five on the afternoon of May 31, 1940. His wife Lillian came home from work to find that the sculptor, alone in the apartment, had hung himself with a clothesline thrown over the transom of a bathroom door.12
Novelli lived at a time when a sculptor, unless looked upon as famous, was often thought of as a craftsman, simply a "statue-maker". Professional sculptors referred to their work as "sculpture", whereas architects, politicians and the general public mostly used the term "statue". Yet, it was also during this time that memorials and monuments were typically dedicated with great pomp and ceremony. The events leading up to the unveiling of the memorials were thoroughly planned and orchestrated, and frequently covered by the press.
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Such was the case when in Jersey City Novelli's memorial America Triumphant was unveiled at Pershing Field in 1922, commemorating the 147 soldiers who died in the War. The dedication ceremony took place on Independence Day, and a crowd watched in awe as an airplane circled the crowd for two hours and at timed intervals dropped a rose to the ground until 147, each one representing one man who died, had made an immense bouquet at the foot of the monument.13 A major New York newspaper covered the pageantry and reported the details of the event along with the names of the dignitaries invited. However, there is neither mention nor credit given to Novelli. His work was treated merely as a purchase, something one buys and shows off with no thought given to the originator.
A similar scenario ensued with the unveiling of his Saratoga Park Memorial, the Brooklyn Victory, on September 11, 1921. A short newspaper article stated that more than 2,000 persons witnessed the ceremony: a detachment of the Thirteenth Coast Defense Command, the 106th Infantry Post, 244 Veterans of Foreign Wars and principal speakers Senator Charles Lockwood, Borough President Edward Riegelmann, Judge George Martin and District Attorney Harry Lewis,14 but once again no mention was made of Novelli. One cannot help but wonder if Novelli was even present at the ceremony, or how he felt about the press ignoring his part in the creation of the monument. Long forgotten for over sixty years, the artist and his works remained obscure until two blundering thieves brought his name to life once more.
Some of Novelli's more successful works include a group entitled Motherhood and another entitled Rock of Ages (Durham, N.C.); sets of bronze doors for the Sigman mausoleum and Judge Schmuck mausoleum, at Woodlawn Cemetery (New York, N.Y.); and other funerary monuments including the Bigham mausoleum, at Hawthorne, New York; La Gioia, and John Lordi mausoleums, at Calvary Cemetery, (Queens, N.Y); The Rowan Panel, at Woodlawn Cemetery, N.Y.; La Mattina-Guerriero, Calvary Cemetery, N.Y.; a memorial for Art Smith, pioneer aviator, in Fort Wayne, Indiana; a Columbus memorial at West Side Park, Jersey City, New Jersey; and the MacSwegan memorial at Calvary Cemetery in Pittsburgh. Novelli also produced various war memorials for Winfield, Queens; Bellows Falls, Vermont, and Clason Point in the Bronx; and the Thurman Memorial in Atlanta. Bronze portrait busts by Novelli exist of President Warren G. Harding (in Marion, Ohio), Julius Berger, Irving Green, Margaret Lawson, Anita Novarra, Peter Anderson, and portraits of his father and grandmother. Finally, Novelli also produced a number of portrait reliefs, most notably of James Cardinal Gibbons (Catholic University, Washington, D.C.), Charlotte Brainard, Charles G. Brainard, Dorothy Langley, Dora Ford, Francis P. De Luna, and William B. Drake, and a Madonna and child, now in a private collection in South Norwalk, Conneticut.15
The Gilded Age, that dynamic epoch between the end of the Civil War and just prior to World War I, was an extremely productive era for the advancement of American sculpture. The success of the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876 inspired similar commemorative events in other cities. These many extravagant expositions were paramount in contributing to the public's awareness of sculpture as an art form, and the demand for sculptural commissions was occurring at an unprecedented rate. Novelli, no different than any other young artist who was eager to make a name for himself, was caught up in this frenzy. The perpetuation of this plentiful and lucrative art market convinced an extraordinarily large number of young artists to channel their talents toward sculpture. This trend continued throughout the early decades of the twentieth century until the number of sculptors escalated to an unparalleled proportion.
In retrospect, it was an exuberant economic period that in actuality could not be sustained indefinitely. Novelli was but one victim of this inflated interval of sculptural history -- unfortunately, he was not alone. There were many, many more sculptors active during that era who must have suffered similar adversities as Novelli, but whose stories will probably never be told.
If there were a need to judge the achievements of these men, some people would say that their success should be measured by their fame and fortune. I prefer to consider the ideas of Ralph Waldo Emerson who wrote, "... to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to give of one's self; to leave the world a bit better ... this is to have succeeded."
References:
1. Rayman, Graham. "Arrests in Theft / Parts of Statue Sold for Scrap, Police say." Newsday. 24 April 2000, A22.
2. "Victory Statue in B'klyn Stolen." Newsday. 22 April 2000, A17.
3. Dewan, Shaila. "2 Are Charged After Police Find Stolen Statue in 300 Pieces." New York Times. 24 April 2000, B5:2. (for full text articles on this subject, go to www.nytimes.com and search the premium archive using the term "Novelli")
4. Ingrassia, Robert. "Commish Vows Statue Solution." Daily News. 25 April 2000, pg. 8.
5. Opitz, Glenn B. (Ed). "Novelli, James". Dictionary of American Sculptors: 18th Century to the Present. Poughkeepsie, NY: Apollo, 1984.
6. Turner, Jane (ed). "Giulio Monteverde." The Dictionary of Art. 34 vols. New York: Grove's Dictionaries, 1996.
7. From the constitution of the National Sculpture Society, May 30, 1893 and www.sculpturereview.com/nss.html.
8. Armstrong, Tom, et al. 200 Years of American Sculpture. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1976. pg.114.
9. "History." Architectural League of New York. 31 May 2000
10. "Architects Award Medals at Exhibit." New York Times. 27 Jan. 1923. 16:3.
11. From the membership information in the archives of the National Sculpture Society.
12. "Novelli, Sculptor, Ends Life in Home." New York Times. 01 June 1940, 32:6.
13. "Roses Fall on Monument". New York Times. 05 July 1922, 21:7.
14. "Unveil Bedford Memorial." New York Times. 12 Sept. 1921, 13:5
15. Contemporary American Sculpture: the California Palace of the Legion of Honor - Lincoln Park. Catalog. San Francisco: April to October, 1929.
© 2000 Part and Josephine Murphy. All Rights Reserved.