Rivertowners enjoying an outing at MacEachron Waterfront Park in Hastings-on-Hudson undoubtedly have seen Gates of the Hudson Arch, a 2012 sculpture by the renowned sculptor Greg Wyatt. A native of the Hudson Valley, Watt draws inspiration from the region as did the Hudson River School artists before him.
Two Sculptors (Draped)
Wyatt’s work, which has been compared to that of the French sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840–1917), incorporates an expressive and natural design. His considerable body of work enriches public places, has been exhibited worldwide, and is held in the collections of major museums. Among his noted pieces is the 1985 Peace Fountain at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine in upper Manhattan, where Wyatt is the sculptor-in-residence. Other permanent installations are found in Arlington National Cemetery, in Arlington, Virginia, and Boscobel House and Gardens in Garrison, New York, as well as in Stratford-upon-Avon, United Kingdom, where the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust is located.
In addition to his work as a sculptor, Wyatt relishes his role as an art educator. He is the director of the Academy of Art, based at the Newington-Cropsey Foundation in Hastings-on-Hudson, which honors the legacy of Hudson River School artist, Jasper Francis Cropsey (1823–1900). The foundation’s complex of picturesque buildings and lush gardens is located in a peaceful ravine that belies the bustle above it on the Warburton Avenue Bridge. In this scenic setting, Bee Local publisher Alan Greenwald sat down for a conversation with Greg Wyatt.
Greenwald: How did you get interested in sculpture, and why did you choose bronze for your artistic medium?
Wyatt: That’s a very good question! I’m not asked about that specifically too often, but when I am, I’m very happy to state that my first interest in drawing and painting was [related to] family education. My family lived here when I was five years old. I went to Hastings kindergarten, and my parents moved the family to Grand View-on-Hudson, and that’s where my father—who was a professor at CCNY [City College of New York] for over 40 years—gave me [a] family education in what’s known as the blind contour drawing method by Kimon Nicolaïdes—who taught at the Art Students League [of New York]—a very Renaissance drawing technique, and I would, during the summer, when I was 13 and 14, accompany my father to Eisner Hall at CCNY, and he would be teaching his class, and he gave me an empty classroom, and I would practice with plaster cast and drawing.
Frederick Douglas Relief Portrait.
And then in the mid-1960s, the family went to Mexico City . . . [where] friends of my parents who worked for the United Nations in Mexico City arranged for an exhibition of my father’s paintings there. [A]fter the opening reception . . . we kept going south to the Mayan pyramids [at] Chichén Itzá, Palenque. Now at Palenque, I realized that there is actually an art form that has three dimensions—not [just] the allusion. Not only the pyramids in architecture, but the depiction of the corn gods and other subjects. That’s how I became interested in sculpture.
My second epiphany was my trip to San Marino, Italy, where, after I graduated [from] Columbia, I was enrolled at Teachers College for my master’s and then my educational doctorate, Ed.D. And so, I remember taking the train to Florence and going to the Palazzo Vecchio and seeing the Loggia [dei Lanzi], the Renaissance Cellini sculptures, Michelangelo’s David and all the rest, and that’s when I decided bronze versus stone versus ceramic sculpture.
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Greenwald: How do you choose your subject matter, and what informs your work?
Portrait of a Philosopher.
Wyatt: Excellent question! At Columbia College [at Columbia University], my classmates and I were introduced to the core curriculum. We were reading Homer, Aristotle, all the way through Cicero, Dante, and Shakespeare, Cervantes, and the notebooks of da Vinci. So even though Columbia College didn’t really have a fine arts school, under [its] auspices, you were only allowed six credits of fine arts. So, my academic undergraduate advisor, [a] Titian expert, the late Professor David Rosand, recommended that I major in art history. So, majoring in the history of fine arts, they gave me the readings that I would not have been exposed to. So, I follow in the footsteps of the Hudson River School of painting masters in terms of their interest in the divine nature with paintings that are expressive of luminism, like Turner, but also, I’m inspired by great ideas. So, I have sort of an art historical, visual interdisciplinary, great ideas memory that I always draw upon, but I also go along the Hudson River, and I draw from the riverfront, I draw Cropsey’s Ever Rest pond.
Greenwald: Your work has been described as based in “spiritual realism.” How would you categorize your work?
Wyatt: Well, that description was very generous words from Anthony Jansen, the son of W.H. Jansen of the renowned text, The History of Art. I was introduced to Tony Jansen through mutual friends, and at that time, he was the chief curator of the Florida State Museum at Sarasota.
Greenwald: Describe your artistic process? Where is your studio based?
Overview of the academy studio.
Wyatt: For 30 years, my studio was in the crypt of Saint John the Divine, along with seven other artists and residents. Philippe Petit, he was a marvelous expert in drawing; also, Paul Winter was the musician in residence; his studio was three studios away from mine. Philippe Petit’s studio was about 100 feet off the nave. There were about 16 different studios. And the Very Reverend James Parks Morton envisioned this idea of the sort of unity of the practice of nondenominational religion and the arts. In those years, that was my studio until about the mid-2007–08 period. I still give outdoor workshops in sculpture around the Peace Fountain circle. I do that with instructors from the New York Academy of Art. I taught at the Art Students League of New York for a decade, a course called Model to Monument, and [it] is essentially what I practice as an artist in sculpture.
Greenwald: Your sculptures are installed and exhibited in many collections, gardens, and museums. Are there any pieces that you favor or consider as more significant?
Wyatt: Well, what I’d like to say is that my first outdoor public sculpture commission was for the [headquarters of the] American Bureau of Shipping, and it was to depict the eagle perched on an anchor, which came from the design of the American bank note. . . . [I]t was a city-wide competition, which I submitted a maquette for, and they selected my design. My studio at that time was [at] the Modern Art Foundry in Astoria, Queens. Bob Spring was the owner, his son is now the owner, and they made space available, and so that was the first and rest is history.
Greenwald: What projects are you currently working on?
Portrait of Thomas Cole, Work in Progress.
Wyatt: I’m working with Bridgewater State University. I’m building a permanent placement sculpture garden dedicated to dance and poetry. My first work [there] was the Baryshnikov, which is life-size, and it captures the arrested moment of the dance. So, that sculpture was the first one in the garden of dance and poetry, and then I created 15 different raised bronze letter reliefs depicting imagery of what the poems referred to in their allusions. And you might say that’s an example of the great ideas more so than being inspired by nature.
I’m also working with the National Park Service. In 2018, I had a six-month exhibition at Yellowstone National Park in homage to the Hayden Survey and Hudson River School artists Thomas Moran, Albert Bierstadt, and Sandford Robinson Gifford. So, those are two different projects.
Greenwald: When did your association with the Newington-Cropsey Foundation begin and how did the Academy of Art come about?
Wyatt: In Grand View-on-Hudson, there were very few parents who had children but . . . one was the family of Mrs. Barbara Newington’s sister, Mrs. Beatrice Ellsworth, and they lived closer to South Nyack, so their son went to Nyack High School, and I went to Tappan Zee High School. We lived within 15 houses of each other. In any case, my parents were friends with the [Betty] Friedans and the Ellsworths, and Tony Morrison—before she went to Princeton she lived in Grand View. It’s very interesting because a lot of fine artists, literary geniuses, and classical musicians seemed to live in Rockland County. I remember riding my bicycle to Hook Mountain; I’d stop at Pickwick Bookshop and that’s where I got interested on Shakespeare.
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Mrs. Ellsworth knew from my parents that I was a new, younger, aspiring artist and so she introduced me to Mrs. Barbara Newington [who] took an interest in my portfolio, and I had a sort of sketch of a sculpture, Baryshnikov in Flight, and she asked how much would that cost if it were cast in bronze. I gave her a younger artist reasonable price, she purchased it, and put it on display in Ever Rest. . . . So, that’s how I began, and then we got to know each other and I said that I’m a graduate of the National Academy of Design, not just Columbia College. . . . So, I invited Mrs. Ellsworth and Mrs. Newington to the exhibition at the National Academy Museum. They were very interested to go because Cropsey’s self-portrait is in the permanent collect of the museum, a portrait of him by Edward L. Mooney is in Ever Rest, so that began the association.
And I was asked to be an advisor to the trustees [of the Newington-Cropsey Foundation] from the fine arts in education perspective envisioning what the ravine could be and how it could serve education, and little by little they appointed me the director of the Academy of Art . . . what I was saying is that I can help sponsor young emerging artists in the fourth or fifth generations of Hudson River School of painters. My specialty is bronze sculpture, but I know how to instruct in drawing and painting.
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Greenwald: What does the program at the Academy of Art entail? What medium do the students work in?
Wyatt: It’s drawing and painting, it’s stone sculpture, it’s bronze sculpture. So, for the last 15 years, we have a fellowship program with NYU [New York University], and we have four of the six in-residence fellows from the humanities perspective; and if you look at the books in [our] library . . . it’s the great books, it’s the Loeb series of Greek and Roman classics; we have an art history library; we have Shakespeare’s complete works. And I also have other instructors, for instance, two instructors from the Gallatin School. I taught at the Gallatin School for about 15 years. The dean and faculty committee select the four to six fellows every year. We also say to candidates, “What did you do last Thursday at 2 o’clock?” Artists use a journal as a tool for what their reflective process was during creating something artistic. Look at Michelangelo’s letters, look at da Vinci’s notebooks, look at Cézanne’s letters.
Greenwald: How does the Academy of Art prepare students for a career in art?
Wyatt: Well, we expose them to the notebooks, we expose them to art technology. We have seminars, we have guest instructors, we have art journals being required [reading], we have them go to Italy to study in Florence.
Greenwald: Tell us about the Academy’s partnership with Vanderbilt University. Are there other partnerships? Where else have students’ works been exhibited?
Wyatt: My first overall educational program here at the academy was to make sort of a master’s program. We had the books, we had the tradition of the Hudson River School painters, and I called it the “Garden of Great Ideas.” And so, Congressman Elliott Engel—who unveiled the Arches at MacEachron Waterfront Park—asked me to create an exhibit of [the] Model to Monument [program] and apprenticeship works, which I did; basically, we revealed the process of educating emerging younger artists, musicians, and poets.
Senator Fred Thompson noticed the exhibit, and he contacted me here and said, “I’m a good friend of the chancellor of Vanderbilt University.” So, one thing led to the next, the “Garden of Great Ideas,” 15 different in-resident younger artists here over a three-year period creating permanent works on the campus of Vanderbilt University. I did that again with Georgetown University Medical Center, 10 works, 25 works, two campuses.
I also did it at Anne Hathaway’s Cottage in Stratford-upon-Avon. I was introduced to Professor Stanley Wells, the great Shakespearian, and he asked me to create a model of The Tempest. The unveiling of The Tempest was supposed to be the only one, but over a six-month period the community and the scholars embraced the idea, and Professor Wells asked if I would create a sculpture trail around—King Lear, Julius Caesar, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Henry the IV, Macbeth, The Winter’s Tale. Now, I also worked with the director of the Shakespeare Centre, Roger Pringle, a Shakespearian, who recommended a separate garden for emerging sculptors; and I said, well good, because I have had many meetings with MaryAnne Stevens, curator of the Royal Academy of Arts, hoping that she would be interested in a retrospective of the Hudson River School masters, and she introduced me to Terry New. So, Terry and I and five of his students and five of my students at the cathedral—we have the Anne Hathaway younger artists.
Seaweed in Bronze.
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Greenwald: How else have you combined art with education? Does teaching inform your art in any way?
Wyatt: Well, I’ve mentioned the Art Students League, the Model to Monument program. So, the Art Students League and the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, we put together this Model to Monument program with League students from the sculpture department. We had to have faculty recommendations, portfolios, and then the director and I would choose from that group.
And so, the second part of the question was, Have I learned from my devotion to education? I’ve learned that I’m always a student, and another student can offer an insight that I didn’t realize was there. And artists don’t retire, we just work as long as we can.
Greenwald: Any final comments about art, education, and so forth?
Wyatt: Well, I’m very proud of the MacEachron Waterfront Park and Hook Mountain State Park sculptures, and I really enjoyed creating homage portraits of the Hudson River School masters, and I created a permanent garden at Boscobel, but I also have made variations and revisions to those masters and I have ideas. . . . It would be wonderful to keep that process going here in the lower Hudson Valley. I think it would be a legacy to the Hudson River School and to the Hudson River Valley, and as well as to the whole notion that artists learn from artists and you learn about the humanities, the interdisciplinary learning path to inspire the fine arts.
Sculptures by Greg Wyatt can be viewed at these websites:
Greg Wyatt: https://gregwyattsculpture.com
Greg and Fay Wyatt Sculpture Garden:
https://www.bsuarts.com/WyattGarden.htm
Great Garden at Shakespeare’s New Place:
Hudson River School Artists in the Garden at Vanderbilt Mansion:
https://www.nps.gov/vama/learn/historyculture/hudson-river-school-artists-in-the-garden.htm
The Newington-Cropsey Foundation Academy of Art
The foundation’s Academy of Art provides an opportunity for emerging artists to concentrate on developing their talents. Fellowships are offered to students at schools such as the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University. Under the direction of Greg Wyatt, fellows practice skills such as the blind contour method of drawing and develop sculptures
from concept to completion. Students attend seminars and study trips and have access to the foundation’s library of great literary works, which help to inform their art.
The Newington-Cropsey Foundation
Philanthropist Barbara Newington, Jasper Francis Cropsey’s great-granddaughter, founded the Newington-Cropsey Foundation in 1977. The private organization is dedicated to the art and legacy of Cropsey as well as to bringing an awareness of the works of the Hudson River School painters and other artists.
From the 1840s through the 1870s, Cropsey was a leading artist who was noted for his vivid autumn landscapes and the variety in his work, which included several paintings based on European subjects. The foundation, which holds in its collection 120 of the 2,500 oil paintings attributed to Cropsey, is considered the primary authority on the artist. Many Cropsey works are held by prestigious institutions, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and more are in private collections.
Among the foundation’s buildings (designed by Peter Gisolfi Associates of Hastings-on-Hudson) located in the once industrial ravine is the Gothic-Revival-style Gallery of Art, which showcases Cropsey’s art and houses his papers and a small research library. Other structures on the grounds include an amphitheater for events, a caretaker’s cottage, and an art studio. The foundation also maintains Cropsey’s former home and studio, Ever Rest, perched on the hill above the ravine on Washington Avenue.
The Newington-Cropsey Foundation transformed the ravine into a garden oasis. (The ravine informed some of Cropsey’s later works and he painted the industrial scene as he saw it from Ever Rest, including an 1891watercolor titled View from the Studio [Overlooking the Ravine]). A pond bubbles once again on the original site of Sugar Pond surrounded by bucolic gardens of green and colorful plantings, and statuaries. Winding slate paths and benches offer a quiet nook for contemplation of the art found in nature.
Newington-Cropsey Foundation
Gallery of Art
25 Cropsey Lane
Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706
(914) 478-7990
Email: anthony.speiser@optimum.net
Website: http://www.newingtoncropsey.com/
Tours of the Newington-Cropsey Gallery of Art and Ever Rest are by appointment and are free of charge.
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