Exploring the Work of Carl Milles

At Brookgreen Gardens in Litchfield, S.C. last week, we enjoyed the outdoor sculpture collections, particularly the Fountain of the Muses by Swedish sculptor Carl Milles (1875-1955). I fondly remember seeing several other Milles fountains. In particular, I remember the Meeting of the Waters, a large fountain in front of the Union Station in St. Louis where I grew up; Sunday Morning, a fountain near the Michigan League in Ann Arbor where I've lived for many years; and a number of works at Cranbrook around 50 miles from Ann Arbor.
 

A figure from the Fountain of the Muses in Brookgreen Gardens.
This is said to be a spiritual representation of Milles himself.

I also remember that a Milles fountain was in the middle of the dining room in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, which strongly impressed me on a visit there when I was in college -- having a work of art inside of a restaurant seemed incredible to me at the time! Out of curiosity, I started looking up these fountains and the life and work of Carl Milles. To my surprise, I learned that the Fountain of the Muses that we saw last week was in fact the same work that was once on display at the Met:

"New Yorkers might well have a sense of nostalgia for his Fountain of the Muses (inspired by the story of the goddess Aganippe), which once lent an air of grandeur to the cafeteria of the Metropolitan Museum of Art but was packed off in 1982 to Brookgreen Gardens outside Charleston, S.C., during a period of reconstruction at the museum." (A Stockholm Sculpture Garden by Gunilla Martensondec, NYT, December 27, 1987)

The Fountain of the Muses in the dining room of the Metropolitan Musuem, 1955. (photo source)
This area of the museum is now the Greek and Roman section as documented in this article:
Redesigning the Met’s Home for Greek and Roman Art

Of course my earliest memories of Milles are of his fountain at Union Station in St.Louis.

This 1940s post card captures the way I remember the Milles Fountain at Union Station. My mother impressed on me
what a wonderful work of art this was! She must have remembered when it was installed in 1940.

"Sunday Morning" on the University of Michigan campus, which I photographed during a recent Ann Arbor Art Fair.

The Triton Fountain by Milles in the courtyard of the Chicago Art Institute. Photo from our visit in 2017.

This photo of the Orpheus Fountain at the Cranbrook Art Museum is courtesy of TripAdvisor.
Milles was on the faculty of the Cranbrook Academy near Detroit from 1931-1951.

Update January 29: I just checked on some of my older photos, and found that I've also seen Milles works at Shaw's Garden in St. Louis: 

"Two Girls Dancing (1914-1917) is Milles’ earliest work in the Garden. Later works Sunglitter (1918) and Orpheus Fountain Figures (Male and Female) (1936) border on the east and west of the three angels with musical instruments, from 1950, in the center basin." (source)

My photo from Shaw's Garden, April, 2011.
Background: the iconic Climatron and some glass
sculptures by Chihully.