Monumental Dreams: The Life and Sculpture of Ann Norton

14. Figures in the Landscape

133 14 Figures in the Landscape In late 1954, Ann and her mother made an extensive trip out west. It was the first of several trips they were to take together in the coming years, for after Ralph’s death, Ann’s mother spent much of every year with her daughter in Florida. This trip was to be transformative for the artist. Ann saw for the first time the spectacular rock formations and buttes, the gorges and canyons, of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah, those natural sculptures of the southwestern desert whose colors and images were to burn into her consciousness for ever after. A photograph of the strange vertical rock shapes of Bryce Canyon, found in her papers, is a vital clue to her changed perceptions during that unforgettable, life-changing trip. Before she left, she had contracted to design and build for the Norton Gallery a three-figure bronze sculpture as a memorial to Ralph, for which he had given his blessing. This was Ann’s “project.” At this point, everyone was in agreement about the work. Letters had gone out to the trustees of the Norton Gallery about the design, including to Daniel Catton Rich, director of the Art Institute of Chicago, one of Ralph’s appointees on the board and charged with approving all projects the Gallery took on. He responded with great enthusiasm. In a letter to Willis Woods, director of the Gallery, he wrote, “I like Ann Norton’s sculpture project. In fact, it is the best thing I have ever seen by her. Also I believe that its setting has been most carefully considered in relation to the Norton Gallery building.” He 134 · Part IV. The Journey to the Source: Florida, 1954–1982 concluded, “I feel sure Ralph would have been most enthusiastic over the high quality and intense poetry which the scheme conveys.” But what had Daniel Rich seen? No doubt the drawings of the threefoot -high work she had originally envisaged. During this time, all those involved assumed that the sculpture in its completed form would be that size. In December 1955 a contract was drawn up between Ann Norton and the Palm Beach Art League. The League would “procure, erect and maintain” the sculpture. Ann contracted to provide the League with funds during this year and in subsequent years to achieve this goal. Ann also required approval of the design, landscaping, and lighting of the work. In other words, the Palm Beach Art League would own and maintain the work, which would stand in Gallery Park, the original site approved by Ralph before his death. So far, so good. But when the Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company of Chicago (Ralph’s bankers and trustees ) became aware of this plan, a serious obstacle arose. The vice president of the bank (and Ann’s trustee), Cecil Bronston, pounced on the issue of the funds Ann had contracted to pay the League for the project, funds that everyone had assumed would come from her trust income. After consulting with lawyers, he wrote to Willis Woods with rather stern advice: “Our counsel state their opinion to be that legal considerations bar the use of such funds for the project. In addition, some question of propriety arises if funds coming rather directly to Mr. Norton are to be used to provide a memorial to him.” (In fact, Ralph had left Ann a separate fund to pay for the memorial.) But all of these issues became moot after Ann’s return from the Southwest . “As I travelled through the rough deserts of Arizona and New Mexico,” she told Susan Hubband of the Palm Beach Post in 1967, “I saw thousands of figures eroded in the rocks. Only an artist could see those mysterious shapes, those beautiful and impersonal forms.” To another reporter she expanded on her description of what she saw in Bryce Canyon. “They are ranged in rows, waiting for something marvellous and majestic to happen. I don’t know what.” The exposure to such a dramatic landscape shocked her senses to the core, and when she got home she took a long, hard look at the memorial sculpture she had designed for the Norton. Her visit to the Southwest had changed everything. She felt now that it must become far larger in scale than the original work she had discussed with her late husband. Instead of Figures in the Landscape...