Found Remnants / Sculptural Decorations

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The fate of End of the Trail and The Pioneer has been related in End of the Trail. No reproductions of Charles Niehaus’, Cortez are known to exist. This piece was probably smashed to pieces and dumped into the muddy pits which had once functioned as sunken courts at the Exposition. However, two “heroic” scale bronze reproductions of Rumsey’s, Pissaro were cast as well as a number of smaller scale versions.

Charles Cary Rumsey’s short lived career was cut short at the age of 43 when he was killed in an automobile accident in 1922. Thanks to the devotion and wealth of his widow, two reproductions of his two-and-one-half times life-size sculpture of the ruthless conquistador, were cast in bronze after his death. One of these stands outside the Mayor’s Palace in Trujillo, Spain, Pissaro’s hometown, and the other stands before the Mayor’s Palace in Lima, Peru, the capital city created by Pissaro. Both of these castings were paid for by his widow, the former Mary Harriman — daughter of Union Pacific Railroad magnate, Edward H. Harriman — and given as gifts to the two cities to memorialize her husband’s sculptural achievements.

As a result of his participation in the famed Armory Show held in New York City in 1913 (financed, in part, by his wife’s parents), Rumsey’s talent came to the attention of the noted sculptor, Karl Bitter, Chief of Sculpture for the PPIE, who awarded him the Pissaro commission. Rumsey created a small scale plaster sculpture in his New York studio which was shipped to San Francisco. This “maquette” was used by the local craftsmen to “point-up” his piece to its final size which was over 19 feet tall. Standing under the belly of the horse for a photograph taken during a visit to the PPIE , Rumsey’s head failed to reach the top of the right foreleg of Pissaro’s giant charger and Rumsey stood 6’-2” tall!

It’s possible that the “heroic” scale plaster which stood at the PPIE survived to become the basis for the later bronze reproductions. A 1917 photograph of PPIE salvage operations shows Pissaro’s horse -- minus its rider -- standing next to End of the Trail which is known to have escaped demolition. Also, Charles C. Rumsey Jr., Rumsey’s grandson, wrote to me that it was his understanding that his grandmother, “had the two heroic bronzes cast from the original plaster”. He goes on to state that some of the plaster versions of this sculpture survived in a Buffalo, NY warehouse prior to WWII. When he attempted to determine whether these pieces still existed in the mid-1980s he learned that the warehouse had been demolished years before, and that there was no evidence of the disposition of its contents.

Though Rumsey’s career was cut short, and his output diminished as a result of his return to France during WWI as an officer in the United States Expeditionary Force, a 1927 retrospective exhibit held at Le Grand Palais in Paris was able to gather 148 examples of his work. The exhibit, funded largely by his widow, was sponsored by the Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts which pays continuing homage to his memory through the award of the “Rumsey Prize” presented annually at the time of its Salon Exhibition.

An article in the January 1, 1935 issue of The Art Digest magazine claims that Lima’s Pissaro was cast the summer before in Brooklyn by E. Gargani using a process attributed to the famous Italian Renaissance sculptor, Benvenuto Cellini. Other credible sources attribute the casting of both “heroic” scale versions of this sculpture to the Valsuani foundry in Paris, and place the date of their pour as “the late 1920’s”. This confusion may have arisen as a result of a 6 foot tall version created by the Valsuani Foundry “in the late 1920’s” which is currently in the collection of the Allbright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo, NY, a gift to the museum by Rumsey’s son and daughter. Several “table-top” versions are also in existence some of which are listed in the catalog of Christie Lee Fine Arts of Aspen, Colorado.