Bronzes by Herbert Haseltine, October 6-29, 1942

Herbert Haseltine was an Italian-born French-American animal sculptor, most known for his equestrian sculptures. He was born in Rome, Italy in 1877, the son of American landscape painter William Stanley Haseltine. He studied at Harvard University, graduating in 1899. He attended Munich Academy in Germany to study drawings and then went onto the Academie Julian in Paris, France, where he studied painting. In 1905, he became the pupil of animal painter Aimo Morot, through whose advice he took up sculpture.

Inspired by the gathering of artists from around the world to the Montparnasse Quarter of Paris, Haseltine chose to make Paris his home for the next thirty-five years until the German occupation of France during World War II. In Paris, he was decorated as a chevalier of the French Legion of Honor in 1922. He lived in a beautiful house where he entertained famous guests, including Arthur Rubinstein, Teddy Roosevelt Jr., Charles Lindbergh, and Cary Grant (who lent some works to this exhibition). He also had a lot of contacts with Russian Royalty. His wife, Madeleine Keith, was born in England and died in 1979 in Paris. Together they had two children. Haseltine moved to the United States for the duration of World War II. In 1940 he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member and became a full Academician in 1946. He was well-known before this exhibition at the Legion of Honor in 1942, which was his first solo exhibition on the West Coast. He remained in the U.S. until 1947 when he returned to France.

Haseltine sculpted a variety of animals but is best known for his equestrian sculptures, most notably the 1934 life-size statue of the thoroughbred racehorse Man o' War at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, Kentucky and ""George Washington on Horseback,"" Gilded bronze statue at the Washington National Cathedral made in 1959. He also traveled to India, where he made an oversized statue of one of the ancestors of the Maharaja of Nawanagar, Jam Shri Rawalji in 1933. It can still be seen there. He replicated many of his large works in table-top sizes. The author of a number of books on animalier art, Haseltine was well connected in American upper class society and did a three-year project to create a work for heiress Barbara Hutton. This project included two horse heads which were gilded bronze, with precious and semi precious stones. After her death the heads disappeared and resurfaced a few years ago at an auction in New York. Herbert Haseltine died in Paris in 1962.

Sources:
Artist biography. Bronzes by Herbert Haseltine, October 6-29, 1942, Legion of Honor Exhibition Records, LH-ER. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco Archives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Haseltine