Career
Mahonri Young returned to Utah in 1905, needing to find a way to make a living. Due to his lack of success and financial troubles, Young considered years 1905 to 1910 his "five years of exile". His first commission was a butter sculpture for Frost Creamery for the Utah State Fair called The Dairy Maid. Later, Young established a mildly successful art class at the YMCA, but the class was canceled after one of his students started an art club that took away his students in 1906. He managed to maintain some private lessons. Young hoped to make a commission by making and selling a bust of B.H. Roberts, but he did not have money to bronze it until 1908. However, Robert's first wife refused to buy the bust because it did not adequately portray her husband's personality. Young finally received more commission when he and Lee Greene Richards completed a mural for the Isis Movie Theatre, using themselves as models for the characters. This was the first outside mural done in Utah and the only one done by Young. However, news stories about the murals kept being killed, leading Young to believe there was a conspiracy against realist artists. However, there were few career prospects in the United States, as the art scene was dominated by conservative juries who were unwilling to take a chance on unknown artists and were uninterested in unique or groundbreaking styles. Museums and exhibitionists wanted to showcase academic art and did not want to showcase American art. Consequently, Young found it difficult to sell or exhibit his work in the United States. He found little success during his first five years back in the United States. However, a group of realists called "The Eight" hosted an independent exhibition in 1908 in Philadelphia, igniting the success realist artists could find in the United States.
Young improved his reputation by making a bust of Alfred Lambourne. In early 1907, the LDS Church granted Mahonri Young permission to create a life-size sculpture of Joseph Smith, the first president of the LDS Church, using his death mask. After the LDS Church rejected his work, Young offered to redo the piece and make an additional statue of Hyrum Smith, Joseph Smith's brother. These statues were accepted and currently reside on Temple Square. Despite financial troubles, Young married Cecelia Sharp on February 19, 1907. Young had initially seen Sharp while both in Paris where Sharp had been studying piano; they had not yet met and Sharp had to travel back to Utah due to her father's health beginning to fail. In Utah, they attended the same LDS Church where Sharp's father was a bishop, but they had not yet met because Sharp was five years older than Young. Young and Sharp met in 1906 while Sharp was giving private piano lessons in Salt Lake City and fell in love. Young made a bust of Sharp in 1906. Polished and beautiful, the bust was different than anything he created during his career.
Young and Sharp's first child, Cecelia Agnes Young, known as "Agnes" or "Aggie", was born on April 25, 1908. Continually aware of the revolt of "The Eight", Young traveled to New York in 1908 and 1909 to determine whether he could be successful in New York. After he presented an idea to construct a Seagull Monument to the LDS Church, they were excited about the project, but were unable to fund it. He instead sculpted a frieze to go above the LDS Gymnasium. This was the last project he completed in Utah before he moved to New York. Young felt that he could relate to the styles and the goals of "The Eight", so he and his family moved to New York in 1910. In New York, Young was a founding member of the Society of American Etchers. He did not find success until 1912, which was a turning point in his career. In 1911, Young won the Helen Foster Barnett prize for Bovet-Arthur a Laborer, displayed at the National Academy. His first New York exhibition was held in 1912. Stevedore was shown at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. In the same year, Young was elected to the National Academy of Design as an Associate. Moreover, in 1912, Young proposed the Seagull Monument to the LDS Church a second time, stressing the personal importance of the monument to Presiding Bishop of the LDS Church Charles W. Nibley. The LDS Church offered Young a contract for the completion of the Seagull Monument, offering him a $200 per month advance for his living expenses. Mahonri "Bill" Sharp Young was born on July 23, 1911, in New York.
Following the Seagull contract, Young was offered a contract to create art for a Hopi Indian exhibition for the American Museum of Natural History. He visited Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah to get inspiration and then returned to New York to complete the project with his colleague Howard MacCormick. Young was offered some commission to create dioramas for Navajo and Apache tribes as well. The Seagull Monument was unveiled and dedicated on Temple Square on October 1, 1913. A member of the Association of American Painters and Sculptors and because of the similar artistic goals and interests, Young became friends with some members of the Ashcan School and joined them in arranging the 1913 Armory Show, which sought to introduce patrons to new styles and movements in art. The Armory show included realism and introduced more abstract styles such as Cubism. Young disliked abstract art styles. In fact, Young believed the emerging styles of surrealism and abstract expressionism that began to appear later in his life were "a greater threat than Communism". In 1915 Young became a member of The Brooklyn Society of Etchers (Today known as the Society of American Graphic Artists or SAGA). The Society's objective was, as it is today, to advance the fine works of American etchers. Young's six etchings, "Noon", "Ensign Peak", "The Main Digger" (which was listed for $18), "Kite Fliers", "Pavers" and "The Sand Pit" were all exhibited at The Brooklyn Society of Etcher's first exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, NY in 1916. Also in 1915, he featured nine pieces at the Panama–Pacific International Exposition where he was awarded the silver medal. Young's Apache sculptures were unveiled at the American Museum of Natural History in 1916. Cecelia Sharp died of cancer in 1917 after which Young returned to Paris to continue studying art. He resided in Paris from 1925 to 1927. In Paris, he taught students, one of whom was Mary Tarleton. Tarleton and Young maintained a romantic relationship for a few years. Tarleton, 27 years his junior, confessed her love to Young but refused his many marriage proposals. Their relationship and consistent correspondence came to an end in 1930. In 1923, Young was elected to the National Academy of Design as an Academician. In 1924, Young unveiled his Navajo statues at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
In 1926, E. W. Marland commissioned a statue of a pioneer woman; he invited twelve artists to submit sculptures to be considered for the monument. Young submitted a sculpture but lost to Bryant Baker. Young considered this the greatest disappointment of his career. Young's statues of Prize Ring boxer bronzes were shown at the Rehn Galleries in New York in 1928, their first exhibition. In 1929, Young crafted a bronze of Joe Gans for Winfield Sheehan, a Fox Film executive at the time. Young married Dorothy Weir, daughter of painter J. Alden Weir on February 17, 1931 and promptly moved to the Weir family farm in Connecticut. Young maintained a studio at the Weir estate which has become Weir Farm National Historic Site. Young first met Weir at 1921 at a dinner to discuss plans for the Phillips Memorial Gallery, one of the books for the gallery was intended to be dedicated to Weir's father. When Young returned to Paris to teach and work on his art from 1925 to 1927, they were reacquainted and became friends. After returning to New York, Young proposed marriage to Weir a few times, but she hesitated having never been married and feeling responsibility to care for her aging stepmother.
In 1932, Young competed in the Art competitions at the 1932 Summer Olympics with eight boxing statues. The Knockdown, which he had sculpted in the 1920s in Paris, won the gold medal for sculpture. In 1934, he began teaching at the Art Students League. The same year, his etching Pont Neuf was featured in Fine Prints of the Year, 1933. In 1941 Life magazine called him "the George Bellows of American sculpture." "Industry" and "Agriculture", a statue of factory worker with tools and a statue of a farmer sharpening his blade, were displayed at the 1939 New York World's Fair. These large sculptures stood at the fair's entrance.
