DOI Heft:
No. 67 (September, 1902)
DOI Heft:Victor D. Brenner, medallist
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.22774#0299
A meric an Studio Talk
VICTOR D. BRENNER,
MEDALLIST.
When the National Academy last year
established a Class in Coin and Medal
Designing, it put the same in charge of Victor D.
Brenner. This gentleman has just returned from
Paris, where he enjoyed the friendship and instruc-
tion of Roty, and his reappearance in America has
a particular interest. He was an expert die-sinker
and engraver when he first arrived in New York in
1890, and now has added to his manual skill the
technique of the Paris schools and experience under
the foremost medallist of the day. Thus he went
from us an artizan, and returns an artist; in an art,
moreover, that had no true representative in this
country. For here, as elsewhere prior to the
establishment of the French Society of “Les Amis
de la Medaille,” medal-making had sunk to a de-
partment of trade; or, if something artistic were
attempted, there was a divorce between the design-
ing and the engraving. A sculptor or painter, with
no practical knowledge of the possibilities and lim-
itations of the cutting process, would be commis-
sioned to produce the design, while its execution
in the die was turned over to a more or less skilled
operative. The barrenness of the result may be
seen in the majority of medals produced during
many years. They are commonplace and taste-
less.
That the work of the medallist had been and
should be a special department of art, with very
special qualities of exquisite expression, was recog-
nized only by a few, and they were powerless to
advance the glyptic art in this country for lack of
the artist. It is on this account that we welcome
so heartily the return ,of Victor D. Brenner.
To the student of personal accomplishment there
is always a particular satisfaction in the contrast
between hard and strait beginnings and the ultimate
success. He forgets, as the artist himself perhaps
does when the sweets of victory are on his tongue,
the long weariness of the previous struggle, and is
philosophically persuaded that the pain of partu-
rition must necessarily precede the birth of art as
of life. However that may be, Mr. Brenner has
had his share of privations, and it is well for him
that he encountered them early and surmounted
them before the enthusiasm of youth dwindled.
He was born in 1871, at Shavly, in the north-
west of Russia, and from his sixth to his thirteenth
year attended the Hebrew school. After three
years’ apprenticeship to his father, who was a gen-
eral mechanic and seal-cutter with considerable
talent in carving, the youth, now sixteen years old,
travelled through the neighboring towns, making
seals. Then he worked for a jewelry engraver in
Riga, and subsequently migrated to Mittau, where
he found employment in a rubber-stamp and type
foundry, cutting dies and illustrations for advertise-
ments. In 1889 he established himself in Kowno
as a jewelry engraver and seal-cutter. But by this
time he had saved nearly enough to pay his passage
to New York, and the following year, on May 17,
reached our shores. He was then scarcely nine-
teen, without friends, knowledge of the language,
or ready funds. For a while he sold matches on
Fulton Street and then graduated to the superior
opportunities of a sweat-shop in Brooklyn. He
was rescued from this by an advertisement, through
which he found employment with a jewelry firm at
$4.00 per week. Meanwhile his acquaintance with
the language and with the local conditions was im-
proving, and it was not long before he obtained a
position as seal-cutter at $12.00 per week, which was
subsequently raised to $18.00. Then followed an
engagement with Mr. H. Popper, as die-cutter and
jewelry engraver, during which he came to the no-
tice of Professor S. H. Oetinger, the numismatist,
whose collection of medals seems to have wakened
in the young man a longing to be himself an artist.
In 1891 he first learned to handle clay at the Cooper
Union night class, but attended only for a month,
and it was 1896 before we find him drawing under
Ward in the night class of the Academy of
Design.
Meanwhile, in 1893, he had started for himself
in business, working for jewelry and silversmith
firms ; steadily improving his financial condition,
but becoming more and more impatient under the
restraints which the exigencies of trade placed upon
xci
VICTOR D. BRENNER,
MEDALLIST.
When the National Academy last year
established a Class in Coin and Medal
Designing, it put the same in charge of Victor D.
Brenner. This gentleman has just returned from
Paris, where he enjoyed the friendship and instruc-
tion of Roty, and his reappearance in America has
a particular interest. He was an expert die-sinker
and engraver when he first arrived in New York in
1890, and now has added to his manual skill the
technique of the Paris schools and experience under
the foremost medallist of the day. Thus he went
from us an artizan, and returns an artist; in an art,
moreover, that had no true representative in this
country. For here, as elsewhere prior to the
establishment of the French Society of “Les Amis
de la Medaille,” medal-making had sunk to a de-
partment of trade; or, if something artistic were
attempted, there was a divorce between the design-
ing and the engraving. A sculptor or painter, with
no practical knowledge of the possibilities and lim-
itations of the cutting process, would be commis-
sioned to produce the design, while its execution
in the die was turned over to a more or less skilled
operative. The barrenness of the result may be
seen in the majority of medals produced during
many years. They are commonplace and taste-
less.
That the work of the medallist had been and
should be a special department of art, with very
special qualities of exquisite expression, was recog-
nized only by a few, and they were powerless to
advance the glyptic art in this country for lack of
the artist. It is on this account that we welcome
so heartily the return ,of Victor D. Brenner.
To the student of personal accomplishment there
is always a particular satisfaction in the contrast
between hard and strait beginnings and the ultimate
success. He forgets, as the artist himself perhaps
does when the sweets of victory are on his tongue,
the long weariness of the previous struggle, and is
philosophically persuaded that the pain of partu-
rition must necessarily precede the birth of art as
of life. However that may be, Mr. Brenner has
had his share of privations, and it is well for him
that he encountered them early and surmounted
them before the enthusiasm of youth dwindled.
He was born in 1871, at Shavly, in the north-
west of Russia, and from his sixth to his thirteenth
year attended the Hebrew school. After three
years’ apprenticeship to his father, who was a gen-
eral mechanic and seal-cutter with considerable
talent in carving, the youth, now sixteen years old,
travelled through the neighboring towns, making
seals. Then he worked for a jewelry engraver in
Riga, and subsequently migrated to Mittau, where
he found employment in a rubber-stamp and type
foundry, cutting dies and illustrations for advertise-
ments. In 1889 he established himself in Kowno
as a jewelry engraver and seal-cutter. But by this
time he had saved nearly enough to pay his passage
to New York, and the following year, on May 17,
reached our shores. He was then scarcely nine-
teen, without friends, knowledge of the language,
or ready funds. For a while he sold matches on
Fulton Street and then graduated to the superior
opportunities of a sweat-shop in Brooklyn. He
was rescued from this by an advertisement, through
which he found employment with a jewelry firm at
$4.00 per week. Meanwhile his acquaintance with
the language and with the local conditions was im-
proving, and it was not long before he obtained a
position as seal-cutter at $12.00 per week, which was
subsequently raised to $18.00. Then followed an
engagement with Mr. H. Popper, as die-cutter and
jewelry engraver, during which he came to the no-
tice of Professor S. H. Oetinger, the numismatist,
whose collection of medals seems to have wakened
in the young man a longing to be himself an artist.
In 1891 he first learned to handle clay at the Cooper
Union night class, but attended only for a month,
and it was 1896 before we find him drawing under
Ward in the night class of the Academy of
Design.
Meanwhile, in 1893, he had started for himself
in business, working for jewelry and silversmith
firms ; steadily improving his financial condition,
but becoming more and more impatient under the
restraints which the exigencies of trade placed upon
xci