KIMBALL, Isabel (Moore) 1863-1950
MOORE, KIMBALL, NOBLE
Posted By: County Coordinator
Date: 9/30/2011 at 18:02:50
#1:
Isabel Moore was born at Wentworth, Mitchell county, Iowa in 1863. She died at Riceville, Iowa, in 1950.
She studied art at the Art Institute of Chicago, and taught school for a time in Mitchell county.
Isabel Moore Kimball was a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a student and teacher at The Pratt Institute of Art. Her work was featured at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and Atlanta’s High Museum along with many other locations.
The Merchild sculpture was commissioned in 1912 and completed in 1914. One of the two original castings can be found in a reflection pool in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and the other is presently in Florida. The casting in the Greenhill Center of the Arts was made using a method called "the lost wax process." See a photo of it at the bottom.
Kimball also produced "Wynona" - The Indian Maiden which is located in the center of Winona, Minnesota. Wynona, or We-Non-Nah was the daughter of chief Wabasha III.
Isabel Moore Kimball is the great aunt of UW-Whitewater Professor Emeritus Martha van Steenderen.
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#2:
The following is a biographical sketch from Mitchell County History, 1989.
ISABELL MOORE KIMBALL
Iowa farms have long been known for the foodstuffs and hardy people that they produce. Now and then they also produce artists such as Isabel Kimball. In the late 1860's and early 70's she received her early education in the country school near her home at Wentworth, then attended the Decorah Institute for secondary education and teacher training. She taught for a while in public schools in Mitchell County, but decided later to pursue her interst in art by studying at the Art Institute of Chicago and at Pratt Institute, New York, graduating from the Normal Art Course of that institute. From 1891 until 1895, she taught drawing, English composition, and geometry at the Moorhead Normal School, Moorhead, Minnesota.
Following her years there, Isabel went back to New York to study sculpture with Herbert Adams while she taught evening classes in drawing at Pratt. She opened her own studio on Fulton St., Brooklin, N.Y., and worked there for the next forty years. She continued to study independently, during at least two trips abroad, in the museums of Europe. A diary she kept on a trip in 1911 describes a visit she made in Paris to the studio of the sculptor Rodin and an exhibition of works by the young painter, Matisse, whose more modern style was not to her liking.
Her own major work was the bronze statue of the Indian maiden, "Wenonah", originally the centerpiece of a fountainn in Central Park, Winona, Minnesota.
The work was commissioned by a Winona businessman in 1900, and was completed in 1902.
She produced a bas-relief memorial portait of Richard C. Barrett of Osage, Iowa, for the State Historical Society, Des Moines. Barrett, like Isabel, was a graduate of the Decorah Institute. A family friend from his time as school principal in Riceville, her later served as Mitchell County school superintendent, was elected State Superintendent of Public Instruction in 1897, and finished his distinguished career as a professor at Iowa State College, Ames, from 1904 until his death.
Loredo Taft, renowned sculptor of that time, author, and instructor at the Art Institute of Chicago, gave the address at the unveiling of Isabel's stone sculpture "Creation" in Highland Park, Illinois, on October 26, 1929. Seven or eight feet high, as originally installed on her brother's estate, this work was carved on all four sides to illustrate Addison's hymn of that title. Some time after her brother Curtis' death, when the estate was broken up for new development, the sculpture was moved to the cemetery where he and his wife were buried.
One of her last works was a large eagle carved from Bedford, Indiana, limestone, for Riverside Cemetery in Riceville. It was completed in 1944 to honor "our boys in the service." Isabel was assisted in carving the work by Ed Hewitt and William Hubbard, and many local young people were encouraged to take a hand with mallet and chisel to help the eagle emerge from the block of stone. Nearby in this cemetery is another of her works, a gravestone for her nephew Gaylord Kimball Noble.
Most of her summers were spent in Riceville where she worked and sometimes taught pupils from the local area and away. Shows of the works produced at her summer art school were held in the studio at Kimball Knoll, and on one occasion she helped organize an exhibit of local handwork, including many articles by older people of the time in the room over Noble's hardware store. Thus, she promoted appreciation for the artistic and mechanical skills to be found close to home as well as the great art of other times and places.
From July 1917 to April 16, 1941, Isabel kept a home on a hilltop at Mountainville, New York, to which she and her artist friends could retreat from New York City. They planted many flowers, shrubs, and fruit trees, making an ideal setting for painting, drawing, and just enjoying the pleasures of nature.
Friends and relatives from her Iowa home were also welcomes many times over the years. In the 1930's she joined the Fifteen Gallery in Manhattan, wheose members collaborated to rent space to exhibit and market their work and that of invited artists and organizations. In her later years, she lived with her widowed sister, Elizabeth, in Elgin, Illinois, and finally returned in 1947 to Riceville with Elizabeth to live with their nephew, Curtis Noble's family.
She died at home at Kimball Knoll on June 5, 1950, and is remembered for her devotion to her family and the love for art she brought to those who knew her.
by Mary E. Noble
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#3:
The following is from "The Kimball Family News" for 1902."The Chicago Tribune, giving a half tone illustration says:
"A large bronze statue of the Indian maiden Weenonah, on exhibition at the Art Institute, is the work of a Chicago artist, Isabelle Moore Kimball. The statue will be the principal figure in the decoration of a fountain to be placed in Central Park at Winona, Minn. The Indian maiden, to whom Winona is in-debted for a name, plays a part in the Indian legends of the Northwest. She was the daughter of a chief, and threw herself into the lake because of disapointment in love.
"Isabelle Moore Kimball is a teacher of sculpture at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, but much of her work has been done in Chicago. The News adds that she is the daughter of D. W. Kimball of McIntire, Iowa, and a niece of W. W. Kimball the Kimball Piano maker."
SOURCE:
http://www.archive.org/stream/kimballfamilynew562tope/kimballfamilynew562tope_djvu.txt
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http://www.whitewatersculpture.com/merchild.php
The photo below is of Isabell Moore Kimball at work sculpting.
The link below the picture is to a photo of Isabel's 1914 sculpture entitled MERCHILD - a child mermaid. It was done in bronze and is presently (2011) located at the Greenhill Center of the Arts at the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater.
Link to larger bio of Isabel Kimball
Mitchell Biographies maintained by Sharyl Ferrall.
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