Hettie Anderson Marker
In 2022, the Commission, led by Karen Strickland, worked to bring the story of Harriette “Hettie” Anderson to life. Anderson was a woman of African descent, born and raised in Columbia, SC, and would become one of the Gilded Age’s most sought-after sculptor’s models and muse. Her story was forgotten in Columbia until the Commission, with the help of the SC Department of Archives & History, conducted extensive research to uncover her influence.
A Gilded Age Muse
Honoring Her Legacy
The final product of the extensive research conducted was a marker erected at her home site in Columbia with a dedication on April 25, 2023.
On March 14, 2024, the South Carolina Numismatic Association worked to get a grave monument placed where Anderson was buried in Elmwood Cemetery located in Columbia.
Columbia’s Hidden Muse of the Gilded Age
Hattie Dickson [Dickerson], also known as Hettie Eugenia Anderson, a woman of African descent, born and raised in Columbia, SC, would become one of the most celebrated sculptors’ models and muse during the cultural renaissance of the Gilded Age.
She is Victory, the winged goddess leading General William Tecumseh Sherman in the iconic statue in Central Park. Sculpted by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, he described her as “certainly the handsomest model I have even seen of either sex.” President Theodore Roosevelt called Victory “one of the best figures of its kind.”
Hettie is the goddess who stands atop what is now the David N. Dinkins Manhattan Municipal Building. Her likeness is on the $20 gold coin known as the Saint-Gaudens double eagle, regarded as “The Most Beautiful Coin in the World.” What little is known about Hettie Anderson, whose likeness is represented on many other historic sites, did not include her background; that she was a woman of color and from Columbia’s Arsenal Hill, a section of the city, that was home to professional and highly skilled African Americans after Reconstruction.
We are documenting Hettie’s story beginning with her birth in 1873, her early years among a highly educated family, and their lives in the Arsenal Hill community, near the Governor’s Mansion. Hettie’s education included the Howard School, the city’s first educational institute established for African Americans and partially funded by the Freedmen’s Bureau.
Around 1893, the 20-year-old Hettie, accompanied by her mother, Caroline Scott, settled in Harlem, New York, during the peak of the Gilded Age, a period when the arts and literature flourished, with New York as its epicenter. Hettie’s training and association with the recently founded Art Students League in New York City would launch her remarkably successful career as a sculptors’ model for neoclassical monuments, paintings, and coins. She was quickly recognized in the art world and cultural scene for her beauty, poise, dignity, and independence.
She was described as the perfect sculptors’ model, the “goddess-like Miss Anderson,” who was in constant demand during the Gilded Age and beyond by the most celebrated artists of her time. These included John La Farge, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Daniel Chester French, Henry Bacon, Evelyn Beatrice Longman, Anders Zorn, and Adolph Alexander Weinman.
Immortalized in Art
The South Carolina African American Heritage Commission’s ongoing research had documented Hettie Anderson as:
- “Victory” In Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ gilded equestrian monument of General William Tecumseh Sherman (1903) at the Grand Army Plaza entrance to New York’s Central Park.
- “Athens” central deity figure in John La Farge’s (1898) lunette mura; in the Rotunda of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Boston, Massachusetts.
- “Civic Fame,” Adolph Alexander Weinman’s (1913) gilded sculpture on top of New York’s Municipal; Building, the largest statue in Manhattan.
- “The Spirit of Life” Daniel Chester French’s sculpture, (1914), in collaboration with Henry Bacon, of the Greek and Roman goddess, Hygeia, giver of health, is in Congress Park, Saratoga Springs, New York. French and Bacon are know for the Lincoln Memorial.
- “The Evolution of Civilization” the Edwin Howland Blashfield’s (1896) murals in the Library of Congress.
- “Mourning Victory from the Melvin Memorial” Daniel Chester French’s sculpture (1906-1908) is a funerary monument to honor his three brothers who died in the Civil War. It is currently on display at Sleepy Holow Cemetery in Concord, MA.
- “Liberty” for the Augustus Saint-Gaudens double eagle (1907-1933), a twenty-dollar gold coin. President Theodore Roosevelt commissioned Saint-Gaudens to create the coin in 1906. Later, in 1933 President Roosevelt banned the private ownership of gold coins to remove constraints on the Federal Reserve in order to print more money during the Depression.
Hettie Anderson’s Enduring Legacy
Hettie was admired for her stoicism and patience, much valued by sculptors, and would become a muse, inspiring emotional tributes by her very presence. She represented only heroic figures. Unlike some of her contemporaries, Hettie never considered posing as a “vixen or victim.”
“There is nothing in Greek sculpture finer than her figure… Her figure is imposing, her carriage queenly and she is famous for her perfect foot.”
The New York Journal and Advertiser described her in 1899.
She was sought after into her 40s. Upon her death in 1938, at age of 63, Hettie was brought back to Columbia and laid to rest in the Lee family plot in Elmwood Cemetery. Her grave recently identified by the Commission will soon bear a marker denoting where she is buried.
The Commission anticipates future contributions of scholarship, research, and documentation adding to the extraordinary life of Hettie Anderson, whose sculptures, paintings, and coins are icons, as she, herself, is becoming.
Support the Hettie Anderson Project
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