John Shearer: A.P. Stewart Bust Sculptor’s Works

Chattanoogans in recent days have been looking closely at the bust of former Confederate Lt. Gen. A.P. Stewart and discussing whether it should remain on the Hamilton County Courthouse lawn.

 

It is all part of a recent national examination of Confederate monuments regarding what they represent to different people.

 

If one looks even closer – at least physically -- at the roughly century-old Stewart bust, he or she will find the name “Belle Kinney” inscribed on it along the bottom of the right part of the general’s coat.

 

Miss Kinney -- who was formally known as Belle Marshall Kinney Scholz and was the sister of longtime Chattanoogan Mrs.

Herman (Marie) Renner – was considered a talented, well-respected and accomplished sculptor. She also distinguished herself at a time when a proverbial low glass ceiling of opportunity still existed for women in most professions.

 

Her other works related to the history of the Confederacy include a statue of Confederate Gen. Joseph Johnston in downtown Dalton and monuments to the Women of the Confederacy at Nashville’s War Memorial Building and in Jackson, Ms.

 

But the Confederate-related statues were actually only a small part of her overall work.

 

A look at old newspaper clippings at the Chattanooga Public Library and sources elsewhere reveals that she designed and created a variety of busts and other pieces of art in a number of locations.

 

Locally, she designed the bust to early Chattanooga pioneer and chief of the Cherokees John Ross. Sitting amid some boxwoods on the northwest section of the Hamilton County Courthouse lawn, it had been dedicated more than three decades after the Stewart bust.

 

Other Chattanooga pieces of art by her include busts of McCallie School founders Spencer McCallie Sr. and James Park McCallie in the entrance area of the school’s chapel. Also, a bust of former Chattanooga mayor T.C. Thompson sits in the lobby area of T.C. Thompson Children’s Hospital.

 

She also sculpted a bust of former Provident Life and Insurance Co. head R.J. Maclellan of Chattanooga.

 

Outside of the area, Miss Kinney’s works include two very prestigious commissions for statues of President Andrew Jackson and Tennessee pioneer John Sevier at the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall in Washington, D.C.

 

Her busts of Mr. Jackson, James K. Polk and apparently Andrew Johnson adorn the Tennessee state capitol. They were among her last works. In fact, the pre-cast Polk bust was in her studio in Boiceville, N.Y., in the Catskill Mountains when she died there on Aug. 27, 1959.

 

Her other prominent works include one of Col. Richard Owen of the Union Army in the Indiana state capitol in Indianapolis. This one – which was done during the World War I era about the same time as the A.P. Stewart bust in Chattanooga -- had an unusual back story.

 

It was greatly funded by Confederate veteran groups due to Col. Owen’s humane and courteous treatment of Confederate soldiers imprisoned at Camp Morton in Indianapolis during the Civil War.

 

A bust she did of Adm. and Nashville native Albert Greaves stands at his alma mater, the U.S. Naval Academy, in Annapolis, Md. He was an early 20^th century Naval leader who did some work on the testing and development of torpedoes.

 

Miss Kinney also did a bust of Union Civil War Adm. David Farragut in the state capitol in Nashville, as well as one to Tennessee pioneer Davy Crockett in Trenton, Tn., in Gibson County in the Western part of the state.

 

She also did a sculpture of Vanderbilt University Dean H.C. Tolman

 

And with her Austrian-born husband Leopold Scholz – to whom she was married from 1921 until his death in 1946 – she designed a large bronze “Victory” statue in the atrium of the Nashville War Memorial Auditorium. They also made some pediments for the Parthenon in Nashville during renovations to the building in the 1920s.

 

The couple – who had met while living in Greenwich Village in New York -- also joined to design a “Winged Victory” figure in the Bronx, N.Y., in memory of the American and Bronx area effort in World War I. It sits atop a tall column by the Pelham Parkway in Pelham Bay Park. When it was dedicated in 1933, some 100,000 people, including New York Mayor John P. O’Brien, attended the ceremony and parade.

 

Some sources also say Mr. Scholz helped with the two statues in Statuary Hall.

 

Mr. Scholz individually designed and created a bust very familiar to Chattanoogans – the aluminum-cast Mailman or Postman in the Post Office entrance area of the Federal Building downtown.

 

Miss Kinney was born in 1890 as one of four children of D.C. and Elizabeth Morrison Kinney, who were from well-known Nashville families.

 

At a very young age, she showed a skill for sculpturing. A bust she did of her father in 1897 won first place in a competition at the Tennessee Centennial Exposition and was displayed in the children’s building.

 

At the age of 15, she began attending the Art Institute of Chicago, where she studied with Lorado Taft.

 

Dr. Gavin Townsend, a UTC professor of art and architecture, said that Mr. Taft had studied figure sculpture at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in France.

 

“In 1886, Taft brought to Chicago the methods of French academic training, focused of course on life-sized naturalistic figure sculpture both in clay and plaster (in preparation for bronze casting) and marble,” he said.

 

Dr. Townsend added that Mr. Taft was famous for cultivating female sculptors and had already trained several before Miss Kinney’s arrival.

 

In 1907, while at Chicago, Miss Kinney received her first commission, a statue of Jere Baxter, the organizer of the Tennessee Central Railway. The statue now sits at Jere Baxter Middle School in Nashville.

 

With this work, she was on her way to a successful career spanning more than 50 years and bringing her many fans in the art community and beyond.

 

Among them is Dr. Townsend. “I’ve admired Belle Kinney’s works for years,” he said.

 

In fact, Dr. Townsend said he has argued that the bust should stay on the courthouse grounds, due in part to the fact that it is a beautiful piece of art.

 

“The bust is a significant work by one of Tennessee’s great women sculptors,” he said, adding that Gen. Stewart also served the United States longer than he did the Confederacy through being a college president and by helping develop the national military park around Chattanooga.

 

Some people, including the local chapter of the NAACP and County Commissioner Greg Beck, have called for the bust to be removed due to the fact that some find Confederate monuments and symbols offensive because of the past Southern connection to slavery. Others consider them important monuments to history and heritage.

 

As for Miss Kinney, her commissions seem to indicate that she was a typical white person coming of age in the late 19^th and early 20^th century South, who understood people’s allegiances to their homeland in a geographic and cultural sense. But all her experiences in different places and her life as an artist likely made her respectful of all people as well.

 

At least she showed that trait in her sculptures, including the one of Gen. Stewart. It shows a man with a distinguished look, but also one with a “tall, dark and handsome” quality that could be right out of Hollywood.

 

It and the other pieces indicate that she obviously had an admiration for the male face.

 

Dr. Townsend said Miss Kinney tried to place her figures in a positive light while also making them realistic.

 

“I guess you'd call it Beaux-Arts,” he said. “It's a style that attempted to present figure sculpture, usually life-sized or larger, revealing their subjects in the best light: thoughtful, dignified, proud, yet sometimes with a touch of humility.

 

“Unlike such contemporaries as August Rodin, Kinney didn't want her statues to be passionate expressions of anguish or ecstasy, or to reveal more about the artist than the subject.” 

 

While Dr. Townsend admired Miss Kinney as an artist, retired McCallie School headmaster/president Spencer McCallie III liked her as a person.

 

One of the few local people likely still living who could say he knew Miss Kinney, he actually posed for her as a McCallie student in the 1950s when she was working on the busts of his grandfather, Spencer J. McCallie Sr., and his great-uncle, James Park McCallie.

 

“They were commissioned by the board of trustees at about the time the chapel was being built,” recalled the younger Mr. McCallie. “I was a preliminary model for my grandfather’s bust, because Miss Kinney thought I had the same facial bone structure.

 

“For a week or two I spent some hours a day frozen immobile on a chair in a corner of Davenport Gymnasium while she formed the basis for my bust. On my last day, she put my hair on it, so I could see myself in clay.

 

“Unfortunately we did not take a picture,” he said with a laugh, adding that he is not sure how she made the bust of his Uncle Park.

 

The two busts are located in the lobby of the chapel, their original intended location, according to Mr. McCallie.

 

Longtime McCallie teacher and archivist-in-residence John McCall said the busts were dedicated as part of the school’s 50^th anniversary in 1955, which was also the year Spencer III graduated from McCallie. A photograph of him and his father, Spencer Jr., standing next to the bust of Spencer Sr. is in that year’s McCallie yearbook, the Pennant.

 

Mr. McCallie said that a year later, Miss Kinney called him about a classmate who became the initial model for a bust of Robert Jardine “R.J.” Maclellan. It was being planned for the then-Provident Life and Accident Insurance Co., which later merged with Unum.

 

R.J. Maclellan had headed Provident from the early 1900s through 1952 and died in 1956.

 

The bust of him was displayed in the firm’s offices for years, but was later given back to the Maclellan family. Today, it is at the Maclellan Foundation offices at 820 Broad St., a foundation representative said.

 

Dr. Townsend said that Miss Kinney was also skilled at converting photographs – or perhaps drawings – into three-dimensional busts, and he thinks that is how she received the commission to do the Gen. Stewart bust. The fact she was a native Tennessean also made her a good choice among the A.P. Stewart chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, some of whom likely knew her, he added.

 

Besides her name on the A.P. Stewart bust, a closer look at that piece of art reveals the name of Tiffany Studios in New York where it was cast, as well as “CSA” on his belt buckle and some stars representing his rank on his collar. Miss Kinney’s name is accompanied by the date 1917.

 

Although it was completed then, it was not dedicated on the courthouse lawn until April 1919. Perhaps World War I, the fact the bust and base were too heavy to put in the courthouse as originally planned, and general event planning delayed its unveiling.

 

Besides her busts, Miss Kinney also made a mark on Chattanooga in a personal way.

 

Her sister, Marie Renner, lived for years at 1312 Shady Circle in Riverview just off Hixson Pike, and she often visited her. A house still stands at that address, although it is hard to tell if it is the still-intact former Renner home, or a newer or greatly remodeled one. The Renners had lived there dating to before World War II.

 

Mrs. Renner’s husband was physician Dr. Herman Renner, who apparently had family connections to Birmingham. Mrs. Renner was his secretary at least part of the time.

 

He had an office at 501 McCallie Ave. in a now-razed building just across Houston Street from the current First-Centenary United Methodist Church. The building was called Renner Apartments at some point.

 

Miss Kinney also apparently had a studio in Chattanooga for a period. A report by the Tennessee Historical Commission in the late 1940s said some representatives visited her studio in Chattanooga to look at her bust of Davy Crockett she was working on.

 

Some old newspaper articles on file at the Chattanooga Public Library also talk about some other visits she made to the Scenic City. In one interview she gave to the Chattanooga News in 1933 while visiting her sister, she called sculpturing the noblest of all the arts.

 

“Sculpture gives the history of a people,” she said.

 

She also gave Jackson Day addresses over radio station WDOD while here in 1947 and 1952, and was the guest of honor at a 1949 luncheon at the Dutch Manor restaurant celebrating a contract signing to produce the John Ross bust.

 

Mr. McCallie remembered attending the dedication of the John Ross statue on the courthouse lawn in the early 1950s as a McCallie student.

 

“At that time prisoners were still held in the top floor of the courthouse,” he recalled. “As the covering was pulled from the bust, a prisoner yelled out, ‘Geronimo’ in a loud, hoarse voice. There was stifled laughter.”

 

The bust of John Ross was also unveiled in 1953 at an event in the New York Times auditorium in New York before its placement in Chattanooga.

 

Among her other visits, Miss Kinney had also described to a reporter with the Chattanooga Times in 1939 that she wanted the bust of Adm. Gleaves to look “undefeatable.” And in 1946, she told the Times her bust of Adm. Farragut dealt with the most interesting subject she had ever worked on. She had also insisted it be made out of Tennessee marble, not another kind as the committee initially suggested.

 

Mr. McCallie said he had later contact with Miss Kinney while he was attending Vanderbilt University and she was spending some time at her home in Nashville. He remembered the encounter as being quite cordial.

 

“She called my fraternity house and invited me to a nice dinner at one of the downtown hotels,” he said. “We reminisced over the making of my grandfather's bust. She was a kind, lovely person.” 

 

Where Miss Kinney was buried after her death in 1959, or whether she was cremated, cannot be found online.

 

Her brother-in-law Dr. Renner died in 1963. His obituary said he had retired from his medical practice 15 years earlier. Mrs. Renner, Miss Kinney’s sister, must have left Chattanooga after 1963, as her name disappeared from the city directories.

 

Neither couple had children.

 

While the whereabouts of Miss Kinney’s body after her passing apparently is unknown today by historians, her busts and statues representing quite a diversity of American history remain.

 

 

Jcshearer2@comcast.net