August Zeller

August Zeller (7 March 1863, Bordentown, New Jersey – 11 January 1918, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) was an American sculptor and teacher.

An exceptional carver, he studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) under Thomas Eakins. He moved to Paris in 1890 to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, and studied further in the studio of Auguste Rodin.

His most prominent commissions were for two Civil War monuments: the 96th Pennsylvania Infantry Monument (1888), on the Gettysburg Battlefield; and the Schuylkill County Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument (1891), in Pottsville, Pennsylvania.

Zeller spent his final years in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as curator of sculpture at the Carnegie Institute of Fine Arts and as an instructor at the Carnegie Institute of Technology.

Biography Early years

Zeller was born in Bordentown, New Jersey, where his father, Wilhelm August Zeller (1834–1904), was a local merchant. Zeller may have inherited his artistic abilities from his mother, Susanne Schmidt Zeller (1839–1875), whose father had been a well-known wood carver in Kaiserslautern, Germany.

At age 19, Zeller obtained a block of Carrara marble and began carving a monument for his mother's grave. Working in the shed behind his father's store, the sculpture took him two years to complete. The Slaughter of the Innocents depicted a Judean mother cradling her infant son, and was a posthumous life-size seated portrait of Zeller's mother. The National Academy awarded Zeller a $5000 traveling prize, but he did not accept it, since one of the award's provisions was that he study art in Italy, a course he preferred not to pursue.

Philadelphia (1882–1887) From 1882 to 1886, Zeller studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) in Philadelphia under Thomas Eakins.

In early February 1886, Eakins was forced to resign over a controversy that had erupted a month earlier—his use of a fully-nude male model before a class with female students. All 55 of the male PAFA students signed a petition threatening to withdraw from the school if Eakins was not reinstated. The petition was ignored by PAFA's Board, and only 15 of those students, including Zeller, actually withdrew. They formed their own school, the student-run Art Students' League of Philadelphia, where Eakins taught classes without pay. August Zeller, the young Bordentown sculptor, is the successful competitor of a score or more who submitted designs for a memorial granite monument to be erected on the battlefield at Gettysburg by the 92d [sic 96th] Pennsylvania Volunteers. The accepted design represents a soldier lying at full length on the ground, with head raised and musket levelled. The monument was installed in the Wheatfield, at a position the regiment had defended on July 2, 1863. The monument was unveiled and dedicated on June 21, 1888. Colonel Henry Royer gave an address at its dedication: "We are here to unveil the beautiful stone which marks the spot where our regiment fought twenty-five years ago. The monument, the artistic merit of which reflects great credit upon the young artist who designed it, bears upon its face the history of our organization."

Based on his successful work on the Gettysburg monument, Zeller was commissioned to design the Schuylkill County Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument in Pottsville.

In September 1894, with his wife Louise Gerber Zeller and their baby daughter Suzanne, Zeller sailed from Southampton, England to the United States aboard the steamship SS City of Berlin. They arrived at Ellis Island, New York City, on 1 October 1894.

Philadelphia (1894–1905) Allegorical Figure of Colorado, 1904 World's Fair, St. Louis. Following his arrival in the United States, Zeller spent several months in Washington D.C. working on the then-under-construction Library of Congress Building.

In 1898–1899 Zeller created "The Last Supper," a white marble high-bas relief over the altar of Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, in Rockledge, Pennsylvania.

Karl Bitter was director of sculpture for the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. Zeller was in charge of the team of sculptors who executed Bitter's designs.

That same year, Zeller modeled in clay a bust of the popular entertainer and folk hero "Captain Jack" Crawford.

Carnegie (Pittsburgh) (1905–1918) Zeller accepted the position of Curator of Sculpture at the Carnegie Institute (now the Carnegie Museum of Art) in 1905, and moved his family to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In September 1907, he became a faculty member at the Carnegie Technical Schools (now Carnegie Mellon University), teaching in the School of Applied Design, and then as an assistant professor of architectural sculpture.

Zeller was buried next to his mother and father at the Bordentown Cemetery. The following year, his Slaughter of the Innocents was installed at the gravesite.

His widow, Louise G. Zeller, was living in St. Louis, Missouri with their son (a widower) and his two children, at the time of the 1940 Census.

Major works

Slaughter of the Innocents (1884), white Carrara marble, height: , St. Louis University Museum of Art. Exhibited at the National Academy of Design, 1884. Exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1885. Installed on Zeller family grave, Bordentown Cemetery, Bordentown, New Jersey, 1918. Removed 1970s, due to vandalism. Donated by Zeller's great-grandson to the St. Louis University Museum of Art, 2004. Bust of Benjamin W. Cummings (1889), marble, location unknown. Bust of a prominent Pottsville attorney. Schuylkill County Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument (1891), granite with bronze sculpture, height of base & pedestal: , height of Genius of Liberty: , Garfield Square, Pottsville, Pennsylvania. The monument features a tall granite Corinthian column flanked by 4 bronze soldier and sailor figures upon its stepped base, and topped by a bronze goddess figure: "The Genius of Liberty." Bust of Judge Joseph Allison (1897), white Carrara marble, height: , Philadelphia Bar Association collection. Allison was a judge of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas from 1851 to 1875. The Last Supper (1899), white Carrara marble, high-bas relief over the altar, Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, Rockledge, Pennsylvania Exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1907. Vases for Pennsylvania Building (1915), Panama-Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco, California.

With F. Edwin Elwell Greece (1907), pink Tennessee marble, cornice figures for the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, New York City. Zeller assisted F. Edwin Elwell on this work. Rome (1907), pink Tennessee marble, cornice figures for the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, New York City. Zeller assisted F. Edwin Elwell on this work. Dispatch Rider of the American Revolution (1907), bronze, height: 9 feet, Old Burying Ground Cemetery, Orange, New Jersey. Zeller assisted F. Edwin Elwell on this work.

Gallery