Biografie von William RIMMER (1816-1879)

Birth place: Liverpool, England

Death place: South Milford, MA

Profession: Sculptor, portrait & figure painter, teacher, author

Exhibited: NAD, 1866; Boston AC, 1876; BMFA, 1879 (memorial); Armory Show, 1913 (lent by Miss Rimmer); WMAA, 1946 (solo)

Work: BMFA (best collection); MMA.

Comments: A richly imaginative and unique painter and sculptor, and an important teacher. Rimmer's father was an expatriate who believed (as had Audubon) that he was the lost dauphin to the French crown. The family emigrated to Nova Scotia in 1818, and moved to Boston in 1826. Rimmer was interested in art from a young age and by 1830 had become familiar with stonecutting techniques (there was a stoneyard near his home) and completed his first work, called "Despair" (11 high, in gypsum, at BMFA). Rimmer would not return seriously to sculpture until the 1850s, but instead focused on painting and drawing, helping to support his family from c. 1831 to 1835 by painting portaits and signs, and drawing on stone at the Boston lithography shop of Thomas Moore from 1835 to 1840. Rimmer married in 1840 and over the next several years earned a living by painting portraits in the Boston vicinity. By 1845, Rimmer and his wife had settled in Randolph, MA, where he worked as a cobbler, occasionally painting portraits. He also began studying medicine at this time, teaching himself through books borrowed from the vast library of his friend Dr. A.W. Kingman. In 1855 Rimmer moved to East Milton, MA, where he practiced medicine full time (after being awarded a medical degree by the Suffolk County Medical Society). During these years he also turned his attention to sculpture, working first in granite, later in clay and marble. One of his pieces came to the attention of a Boston art patron, Stephen H. Perkins, who subsequently encouraged Rimmer and provided funds so that the artist could start a full-length statue of the "Falling Gladiator." When it was cast in plaster in 1861 (it was not put in bronze until 1906), Perkins showed it in Boston and Europe, bringing Rimmer a small degree of recognition. His powerful treatment of anatomical form and the emotionialism expressed in the "Falling Gladiator," and also seen in his "Dying Centaur" (1871, BMFA) and the "Fighting Lions" (1871, MMA), did not fit in with the prevailing taste for neoclassicism in Rimmer's day (although it evokes and pre-dates the style of Rodin). Rimmer's figurative paintings were rarely seen in his lifetime but show the same romantic impulse as his sculptures. His most famous painting, "Flight and Pursuit" (1872, BMFA) is both mysterious and dreamlike, and has evoked many interpretations since his death. In his own lifetime, however, Rimmer gained more notice for his lectures on art anatomy, which he began giving in 1861 in Boston. As his reputation spread, he was invited to give a series of ten lectures on art anatomy at Lowell Institute in 1863/64, and gave instruction to artists at the Boston Athenaeum. From 1864 to 1866 he conducted his own school of drawing and modeling in Boston. Rimmer moved to NYC in 1866 in order to serve as director of the School for Design for Women at the Cooper Institute in NYC. He returned to Boston in 1870, reopened his school and taught there until 1876, and during the last three years of his life taught in the art school of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. An influentical teacher of many Boston artists, Rimmer is particularly important for encouraging many women to pursue professional careers in art. Note: like W.M. Hunt, Rimmer lost most of his work in the Boston fire of 1872. Auth.: Elements of Design (Boston, 1864) and Art Anatomy (Boston, 1877).

Sources: G&W; Truman H. Bartlett The Art Life of William Rimmer (1882); DAB; Gardner, "Hiram Powers and William Rimmer;" Lincoln Kirstein, William Rimmer (WMAA, 1946); Pierce and Slautterback, 144; Craven, Sculpture in America, 346-57; Charles A. Sarnoff, "The Meaning of William Rimmer's "Flight and Pursuit,"" American Art Journal vol.6, no.1 (May 1973): 18-19; Marcia Goldberg, "William Rimmer's "Flight and Pursuit": An Allegory of Assassination," Art Bulletin vol.58, no.2 (June 1976): 234-40; 300 Years of American Art, vol. 1, 171; The Boston AC; Brown, The Story of the Armory Show.