William Hunt Diederich (1884–1953)

William Hunt Diederich (1884–1953) sat with the same self-assurance astride the wild-eyed horses of the American West as he did mounted on the finely tuned horses on his family’s European estate (Fig. 1). These two competing lifestyles: the rough and tumble world of the independent cowboy and the rarefied, disciplined world of the gentry, informed Diederich’s modernist approach to art, expressed in his aristocratic yet fluid forms. Both personas were linked by Diederich’s singular fascination with animals. While the human form figured in his work, it is for his depiction of animals that he is most widely recognized. “I love animals first, last and always,” he once said, “Animals seemed to me truly plastic. They possess such supple, unspoiled rhythms.”1

Growing up in Szent-Grot, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Diederich’s family’s home was a wonderland of exotic hounds, horses, and stags. By the age of five, with scissors in hand, the young Diederich began creating unique paper silhouettes of these noble beasts. The tradition of scherenechnitte, otherwise known as paper cutting, began in the 1500s in Switzerland and Germany. Diederich’s unusually delicate cutouts were the first manifestation of animals as the primary motif in his work. Their graceful lines, inherent regality, and fluid movement fed a bottomless reservoir of aesthetic inspiration (Fig. 2).

While it was his work in the decorative arts that forged his legacy, Diederich was also a gifted painter, draughtsman, ceramist, and the creator of exceptional sculptures (Fig. 3). With the proficiency of an animal tamer, Diederich wrangled wrought iron, transforming one of the most obstinate and inanimate materials, into elegant and energetic designs, producing a body of ironwork that projects an aura of weightlessness. In the beautifully wrought Hounds and Hares chandelier (Fig. 4), Diederich plays with positive and negative space to enhance the sensation of lightness. The stylized shape of the hounds and the dynamic articulation of the hares, their attenuated bodies slicing through the air, distract the viewer from the chandelier’s heavy metal medium.

In 1900, at the age of sixteen, Diederich moved to Boston to live with his maternal grandfather, the painter William Morris Hunt (1824–1879), who introduced the Barbizon school of landscape painting to America.  (His great uncle, Richard Morris Hunt [1827–1895], was the architect for the central wing of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and built homes for many of society’s storied families: Vanderbilts, Astors and Belmonts.) Diederich was enrolled at the venerable Milton Academy; however, his rebellious nature clashed with the school’s traditional academic environment and he dropped out. He spent the next few years trying to soothe his restless spirit and satisfy his intellectual curiosity. His odyssey began in 1904 in Paris, where he studied with the preeminent animalier Emmanuel Frémiet (1824–1910) before returning to the United States and embarking on what he referred to as “the happiest episode of my entire career.”2

A year later, Diederich moved out west, working on ranches in Arizona, Wyoming, and New Mexico. Ever the wanderer, in 1906 he shed his cowboy persona and enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where he befriended the sculptor Paul Manship (1886–1966). The two friends moved to Europe in 1908 after Diederich was expelled for using “improper language.”  The incident was the beginning of a life-long pattern of provocative behavior that influenced the critical assessment of his work and ultimately affected his standing as an artist.

However, in 1913 at the Salon d’Automne in Paris, the French and American critics had high praise for Diederich’s Playing Greyhounds plaster (Fig. 5). His work caught the eye of Baron Robert de Rothschild who purchased a bronze cast of the sculpture, and the two men went on to become good friends. The baron also commissioned a pair of iron gates from the salon’s rising star.

The greyhound became a favorite subject in Diederich’s repertoire of wild beasts celebrated in his paper silhouettes and decorative objects, including his unique fire screens. His Playing Hounds fire screen (Fig. 6) is a superb example of the artist’s ability to mesh skilled design with the practical to produce a work of art. In a remarkable display of virtuosity, Diederich’s greyhounds appear frozen in space while simultaneously engaged in spirited play. Their elongated, sinewy silhouettes stretch from one end of the screen to the other, their feet never touching the ground, and appearing to be lighter than air. Diederich’s masterful execution makes us forget that the fire screen is a composite of heavy iron pieces. This simplified interpretation of form that still retained the recognizable truths about his subject became the hallmark of Diederich’s distinctive style.

Before returning to America at the outbreak of World War I, Diederich traveled extensively in Europe, where he was first exposed to Renaissance and Baroque ironwork. The enormous, intricately carved castle gates and the unfettered form of the local farm tools stirred his imagination. Diederich believed that the mundane, utilitarian objects that we spend so much of our lives interacting with should be beautiful. He left Europe packing a new design aesthetic: The synthesis of the grand and the simple equals modernity.

In 1920 Diederich had his first one-man show at the Kingore Gallery in New York, which included many of his wrought iron and ceramic pieces. During the twenties, Vanity Fair magazine, one of the earliest proponents of modernism, featured Diederich’s work at least twice a year. Artist Guy Pène du Bois (1884–1958) characterized his friend as “a decorative revolutionist with one foot in the past and the other pointing a toe at the future.”3 Diederich was by now also producing furniture for a wealthy clientele who wanted some relief from traditional furnishings. Whether it was his lamps or his chairs, the emphasis on action was central to his creative concepts. His Mountain Goats candelabrum (Fig. 7) is a superb example of elevating the “practical” in every day life. He transforms a traditional object into a form of whimsy without compromising its functionality. Diederich co-figured the goats as if they were dancers, their necks arched, bodies attenuated, effortlessly holding their position like dancers on point. Each finely etched goat supports a candleholder as if wearing a crown of light. Diederich did not have to “sell” his clients on his modern designs. The response was immediate and his work sold quickly. As a result, galleries were often hard pressed to find pieces to display.

Like his peer Elie Nadelman, Diederich was inspired by the mix of the sophisticated and the naïve often found in folk art. At first glance, his Rooster Crowing standing lamp (Fig. 8) evokes the look and feel of a design from early American advertising. He deliberately alludes to the past by perching the more than three-foot-tall rooster atop a stand with twisted tripod legs, ringing the rooster’s legs with the same twisted metal. He injects fun and whimsy into a household object, cleverly addressing our expectations of a rooster’s early morning crowing by hanging a shade in the crooner’s mouth.

The 1920s were a period of professional highs and personal lows for Diederich. A complex character—part charmer and part provocateur—despite his prickly personality, the apartment he shared in Greenwich Village with his wife and two children had become a favorite meeting spot for Pène du Bois, Gaston Lachaise, Marguerite and William Zorach, Man Ray, Manship, and Nadelman. But in 1922 he divorced his wife, establishing a home for her and their two children in Cagnes-sur-Mer, France, where he continued to spend time with them despite marrying the Countess Wanda van Goetzen and starting another family. With his new wife he bought an eleventh-century castle in Burgthann, Bavaria, where he established his only permanent studio. During this period he participated in a number of group shows in New York. The acquisition of his work by the Whitney Museum, the Newark Museum, and the purchase of seven paper silhouettes by The Metropolitan Museum of Art confirmed his critical stature.

In 1928, Diederich fell off a ladder seriously injuring his right ankle. His doctors recommended amputating his foot but the peripatetic artist refused. He would live in pain for the remainder of his life. Initially his injury did not impede his creative output, and he continued to travel to Morocco to further his interest in ceramics and to work in his pottery studio in Woodstock, New York. In 1928 his work was included in a group show of ceramists at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Throughout his career, Diederich’s paper silhouettes provided an ongoing incubator for his ideas. His extraordinary cutouts shared a two-dimensional aesthetic similar to the silhouettes crafted for his metal works (Fig. 9). His cutouts often enabled him to explore new forms before committing them to iron. Even though the two mediums shared a common aesthetic, the paper silhouettes remain singular works of remarkable complexity (Fig. 10). Diederich’s meticulous manipulation of the pliant physical shapes of both humans and animals is orchestrated as if he were a choreographer creating the lyrical precision and graceful movement of a pas de deux.

Diederich’s seemingly indefatigable execution of animal designs was the cornerstone of his commercial and critical success. His fire screens and weathervanes achieved such popularity that he created a selection of border motifs and a library of animal subjects to allow his clients to pick and choose key elements.

In 1934, as part of the reconstruction plans for New York’s Central Park Zoo, Robert Moses, the first city-wide parks commissioner, created an innovative program of animal art to enhance the new “picture-book” designs for the zoo.4 Diederich was contracted to create a series of signs and weathervanes. His whimsical weathervanes, set on many of the zoo’s rooftops (Fig. 11), delighted visitors almost as much as their real–life counterparts. Two years later, Diederich resumed large-scale work, having found medication to control the infections and pain plaguing him from his leg injury. He designed the Rabbit Balcony Railing for the Long Island country home of Mr. and Mrs. Forbes Hawkes. Time magazine hailed it as the work of “one of the best sculptors and ablest iron workers in the U.S.…”5

Diederich’s triumph was short-lived. Soon his pro-German stance began to manifest itself in anti-Semitic activities. In 1946 he was expelled from the National Institute of Arts and Letters for using Institute letterhead to disseminate anti-Jewish propaganda.

The remaining years of Diederich’s life were a time of creative depression and great personal grief. Within a period of eighteen months he lost both his wives and his son was killed in the Korean War. Within two months of his losses, in 1953, Diederich died.

It is difficult to reconcile the legacy of William Hunt Diederich: He was a man both guilty of unconscionable, ugly rhetoric and an artist who forged works of such enduring elegance and beauty.

Bernard Goldberg is the founder of Bernard Goldberg Fine Arts, LLC with galleries located in New York City and East Hampton, New York. Established in 1998 the gallery specializes in American art of 1900 to 1950, including Ashcan, Modernist, Urban Realist, Social Realist and Regionalist paintings, sculpture, works on paper and high-end related decorative arts. Mr. Goldberg was formally a practicing attorney at law in New York City. He has been a private collector of American fine and decorative arts for over forty years.

Sandy Pearl holds an MA in Modern Art, Connoisseurship, and the History of the Art Market from Christie’s Education. Prior to working as an art consultant, Ms. Pearl was a multiple award-winning journalist and producer in film, television, and new media.