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Abstract: Theodora Alice Ruggles Kitson (1871-1932) was one of the most prolific and successful American women sculptors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During her lifetime, she earned honors, awards, and commissions as well as public and critical praise. Today, her name is little known in comparison to her contemporaries even though her work, particularly the war memorials for which she was most famous, can be found in nearly every state. As art historical researchers attempt to revive the careers of forgotten women artists, the author argues that it is time to reexamine Kitson's rich life and legacy. Dr. Christine C. Neal is a professor of art history at the Savannah College of Art and Design.
This article takes its title from a phrase, "a revolt against nature: a woman genius," that art critic and writer Octave Mirbeau (1848-1917) used to describe French sculptor Camille Claudel (1864-1943). In the view of their contemporaries, the term was equally applicable to American sculptor Theodora Alice Ruggles Kitson (1871-1932) in both its positive and negative connotations.1 From very early in life, the label "genius," usually applied to a man and intended as a compliment, was used to describe Kitson. This characterization first appeared in print in 1890 in relation to her entries in the Paris Salon when she was a teen. Five years later in 1895, the twentyfour-year-old Kitson's talent was heralded again when a reporter for Harper's Weekly wrote, "Though one of the youngest women who are known through their work in the art world, Mrs. Kitson has had the most successful career of any woman who has undertaken the profession of sculpture."2 In 1893, at the age of twenty-two, Theo Kitson and her husband, Henry Hudson Kitson (1865-1947), were admitted as inaugural members to the National Sculpture Society, making Theo its first female member.3 A headline in 1902 in The Boston Globe praised Kitson as having "great genius," highlighting the fact that she was the "first of her sex to execute a soldier's monument."4
Kitson's famous memorial of the Spanish-American War, the Hiker (1906), became the icon of that conflict and was widely reproduced throughout the continental United States. Indeed, the war memorial genre became her specialty. One of forty artists who contributed...