Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington
was born in 1876 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her interest in animals stemmed from her father who was a professor of Paleontology at Harvard. Hyatt studied sculpture in Boston with Henry Kittleson before enrolling at the Art Students' League where she studied under Herman Atkin MacNeil. A 1903 exhibition at the Society of American Artists in New York featured her sculpture of two horses titled Winter Noon, which she exhibited again at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904. Hyatt spent her time at the Bronx Zoo sketching and modeling animals. She went to France and Italy to study, receiving many awards and honors for her works there. Hyatt won the Purple Rosette of the French Government and was made a Chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur for her equestrian group of Joan of Arc. In 1923 she married the philanthropist Archer Huntington, who in 1931, purchased 10,000 acres and built Brook Green Gardens near Charleston, South Carolina as a home and studio for his wife. Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington was one of the most prolific American artists of the 20th century. She produced hundreds of models that were cast in bronze. Her studio at Brookgreen Gardens is open to the public and houses not only examples of her works but the works of many of the most famous and talented artists of her time. Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington died in 1973.