Hettie Anderson (1873-1938): African-American portrait model, overlooked Upper West Sider
In 1974, Bill and Willow Hagans traveled from Detroit to New York to get married at City Hall. Watching over their ceremony from the top of the Manhattan Municipal Building stood Civic fame, a thirty foot gilded statue by Adolph Alexander Weinman. Hettie Anderson was the role model, but as Bill and Willow said their vows, that name meant nothing to them.
Photo: Valeriy Ovechkin Mod2106 via Wikimedia Commons
The couple lived in Detroit, Michigan across from Bill’s grandmother, Mamma Jeanne. She was 90 and they would stop by if she needed groceries or a light bulb or when they just wanted to have a cup of tea together. Bill and Willow were about to make another trip to New York when Mamma Jeanne, while carrying tea into the living room, said, “Wave Cousin Tootie.”
“Who is cousin Tootie?” How come I don’t know her? Willow asked.
“Well, we haven’t talked too much about her because she was undressing at a time that was not appropriate,” replied Mum Jeanne.
“Why was she undressing?”
“She was a model artist.”
As Mum Jeanne began to reveal their family history, Willow shouted in the next room, “Bill, are you listening to this?” To take notes. Start writing.
This chance conversation turned into a lifelong adventure for Bill and Willow. Together, they will spend the next 40 years working tirelessly to uncover the fragmented history of their cousin, Hettie Anderson.
In the mid-1890s, Hettie Dickerson, a “fair-skinned African-American girl with the figure of a goddess” moved from Columbia, South Carolina to the Upper West Side of Manhattan with her mother, Caroline. . They came from an educated family of brass, seamstresses, doctors, pharmacists, academics and politicians, fleeing the brutal conditions of a post-Civil War South. Hettie, then in her early twenties, signed up and modeled at the Art Students League and, for some reason, changed her name to Hettie Anderson. After only a brief period in New York City, she became a central figure in the American art world and a favorite model of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Anders Zorn, John La Farge, Adolph Weinman, and others.
READ MORE: Maya Angelou’s life on the Upper West Side
An intimate print by Anders Zorn from 1897 reveals a nude Hettie, lounging behind a weathered Auguste Saint-Gaudens. It was once believed to be Saint-Gaudens and his mistress, Davida Clark. However, in 1982 a photo of Davida Clark was published that did not look very much like Zorn’s engraving.
Anderson depicted behind Saint-Gaudens in an engraving by Anders Zorn, 1897. Anders Zorn, Public domain via Commons Wikimedia
In the late 1890s, Hettie began posing for Victory within the framework of Auguste Saint-Gaudens William Tecumseh Sherman monument which is on the southeast corner of Central Park. A few years later, Theodore Roosevelt commissioned Saint-Gaudens to create a $ 20 gold coin. Hired to pose, Hettie became the model for the Liberty coin in 1905. He portrayed Hettie, as Liberty, holding an olive branch in one hand and a torch in the other.
The coin’s circulation only lasted a few years, and in June 2021, a 1933 coin sold at Sotheby’s for nearly $ 19 million, breaking auction records. In 1907, Auguste Saint-Gaudens died, putting an end to an era of intense collaboration nourished by mutual respect and admiration.
Author unknown, public domain via Wikimedia Commons
In 1913, Civic fame by Adolph Weinman was unveiled atop the Manhattan Municipal Building without crediting a model and has led to speculation. Although different designs have been attributed to this monumental 30-foot sculpture, a June 1913 Architectural Record issue provides some clarification. In the issue, Charles H. Dorr says: “… there has been a lot of speculation about his identity. It might be interesting to note, however, that she is a girl from New York, and posed for the figure of Victory… By Auguste Saint-Gaudens.
Model by artist Hettie Anderson, bust of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, photographed by De Witt Ward. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
Hettie would live with her mother in the same house on the Upper West Side for the rest of her life. Eventually she worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art where she was well respected and financially supported, but she struggled with mental illness throughout the last 20 years of her life. In a 1920 letter to Henry Watson Kent, secretary of the Met’s board of trustees, Hettie is described as having “ideas of being stared at when she is on the streets and of being swayed by a strange power that she does not know. can not understand “.
READ MORE: A Day in the Life of Bobby: Discovering Virgil Fox
Her mother, listed in New York censuses as white but “colored” in South Carolina records, died in 1928 at the age of 88. Hettie continued to live in the same apartment at 698 Amsterdam Avenue (between 93rd and 94th streets). The 1930 census indicates that Hettie was unemployed and white. On January 10, 1938, Hettie died of heart failure, alone in her Upper West Side home. His estate, worth tens of thousands of dollars, was given to his nieces and nephews and his legacy was largely forgotten for 40 years. Until a couple from Michigan decided to share a cup of tea with their grandmother.
