MORE ON MODEL HETTIE ANDERSON

Her likeness has been rendered atop monuments and on gold coins. In Augustus Saint-Gaudens' towering, gilded equestrian sculpture honoring the Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman at Grand Army Plaza in Manhattan, she represents the winged Greek goddess Victory striding in sandals ahead of his horse, one arm outstretched. But though her image can be found in multiple places around the United States, little is known about the model, Hettie Anderson.

What is known is that she surfaced in Manhattan in the 1890s, a light-skinned African American who joined its cultural scene after escaping bitter prejudice in the South. Sculptors and painters sought to portray what one newspaper article described as her creamy skin, crisp curling hair and warm brown eyes.

But Anderson received less media attention than some of her contemporaries, like the models Evelyn Nesbit and Audrey Munson, who became enmeshed in murder and sexual assault scandals. And over time Anderson's name became disassociated from the celebrated artists who hired her.

Her story remained in obscurity until the 1990s, when the researcher Willow Hagans, who is also Anderson's cousin, began publishing scholarly articles about her that Ms. Hagans wrote with her husband, William E. Hagans.

Anderson was born Harriette Eugenia Dickerson in 1873 in Columbia, S.C. Her mother, Caroline Scott, was a seamstress. Her father is listed in documents as Benjamin Dickerson.

Research, including findings by her cousin Amir Bey, shows that before the Civil War the government designated Anderson's family free colored persons; they owned land and earned wages.

But the brutal enforcement of Jim Crow laws in the South and financial hardship eventually drove Anderson and many of her relatives northward. She and her mother rented an apartment in Manhattan on Amsterdam Avenue at 94th Street.

She was a favorite of Saint-Gaudens, who called her the handsomest model I have ever seen.

I need her badly, he once wrote to a friend. In a draft of his memoir, he wrote that he depended on her stamina for posing patiently, steadily and thoroughly in the spirit one wished — in his case in swirling togas atop monuments and on gold coins.

To read the complete article, see:
Overlooked No More: Hettie Anderson, Sculptors' Model Who Evaded Fame (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/12/obituaries/hettie-anderson-overlooked.html)

To read the earlier E-Sylum articles, see:
HETTIE ANDERSON, MODEL FOR SAINT-GAUDENS (https://www.coinbooks.org/v22/esylum_v22n02a20.html)
HETTIE ANDERSON: MODEL FOR SAINT-GAUDENS (https://www.coinbooks.org/v22/esylum_v22n26a20.html)

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