Fountain of the Centaurs is a fountain located on the grounds of the Missouri State Capitol in Jefferson City, Missouri, north of the Capitol building.
Fountain of the Centaurs is a fountain located on the grounds of the Missouri State Capitol in Jefferson City, Missouri, north of the Capitol building.
The fountain consists of two separate components, the granite pool containing the bronze centaurs and other figures by Adolph Alexander Weinman and the Signing of the Louisiana Purchase Agreement, a large high relief by Karl Bitter. Both were dedicated in 1927. [1]
Although the mythical beings in the fountain are labeled as “centaurs” they are in fact “ichthyocentaurs". [2] This is because the lower portion of their bodies are sea serpents rather than horses. Each of the centaurs is portrayed in a struggle with some sort of creature of the waters. They both are surrounded by playful sea urchins who spray water on them.
After being named director of sculpture for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904, Bitter contributed several pieces to the array of sculpture at the event. Since it was all made of staff and thus perusable and “swept into the dust bins of time,” only his relief showing the signing of the Louisiana Purchase by Robert R. Livingston, James Monroe and “the amiable” François Barbé-Marbois was saved. Following the close of the fair, Bitter was employed to make “improvements in a score of delicate details” of the work and it was cast in bronze and placed in the Jefferson Memorial in St. Louis. [3] Bitter was comfortable with the proposed changes and made them, “without any special thumbscrew to my conscience” [4] A decade later, the Missouri Capitol Decoration Committee received permission from Bitter's widow to make another bronze casting of the work and place it in Jefferson City. [5]
The relief is used on a US Postal stamp commemorating the 150th anniversary of the event.
Lee Oscar Lawrie was an American architectural sculptor and a key figure in the American art scene preceding World War II. Over his long career of more than 300 commissions Lawrie's style evolved through Modern Gothic, to Beaux-Arts, Classicism, and, finally, into Moderne or Art Deco.
Adolph Alexander Weinman was a German-born American sculptor and architectural sculptor.
Karl Theodore Francis Bitter was an Austrian-born American sculptor best known for his architectural sculpture, memorials and residential work.
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The Missouri State Capitol is the home of the Missouri General Assembly and the executive branch of government of the U.S. state of Missouri. Located in Jefferson City at 201 West Capitol Avenue, it is the third capitol to be built in the city. The domed building, designed by the New York City architectural firm of Tracy and Swartwout, was completed in 1917.
Isidore Konti was a Vienna-born sculptor. He began formal art studies at the age of 16 when he entered the Imperial Academy in Vienna, where he studied under Edmund von Hellmer. In 1886, he won a scholarship that allowed him to study in Rome for two years. While there he developed a love of Renaissance art that was to affect the nature of his mature sculpture. Upon returning to Austria, Konti worked as an architectural modeler.
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The Sciences and The Arts Fountains are a pair of Bedford limestone fountains, one on either side of the main entrance to the Missouri State Capitol in Jefferson City, created by Robert Ingersoll Aitken. Each fountain consists of two basins—the lower 35 feet (11 m) in diameter and the upper 11 feet (3.4 m) feet in diameter. The latter are supported by drums on which allegorical figures are carved in relief. The four figures on each fountain alternate between male and female.
Thomas Jefferson is a 1911 bronze statue of a seated Thomas Jefferson created by Karl Bitter for the Cuyahoga County Courthouse in Cleveland, Ohio, United States.
The Smithton Land Company was a group of American pioneers who in 1818 established the frontier village of Smithton, Missouri in the Boonslick region of Missouri, then the Missouri Territory. In 1821 the settlement was renamed Columbia, Missouri and relocated slightly East of its original location. Smithton was the first county seat of Boone County. The company and town were named after Thomas Adams Smith, the receiver of the land office in Franklin, Missouri.
Bruno Louis Zimm was an American sculptor. He created a variety of works: fountains, memorials, freestanding sculptures, and architectural sculptures.
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