Lucile Swan (1887 - 1965)

Born 10 May 1887 in Sioux City, Woodbury, Iowa, United States

Wife of Jerome S Blum — married Dec 1912 (to 1924) in Paris, France

Died 2 May 1965 at age 77 in New York City, New York, United States

Biography

Lucile was born in 1890. She passed away in 1965.

Lucile Swan, painter and sculptor, was born in Sioux City, Iowa on May 10, 1890. She received her early education at Episcopal Boarding School and in 1903 the family moved to Chicago. In 1908 Lucile began study at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In December 1912 she married artist Jerome Blum in 1912 then from 1916 until 1923 she worked and travelled in Corsica, Japan, China, Tahiti and France. In 1924 she and Blum divorced after which she worked on the Frank Lloyd Wright commission in Wisconsin. Two years later, in 1926, Lucile closed her Chicago studio and moved to New York City. In March 1929 Lucile exhibited at Anderson Galleries in New York and accepted a commission from the Cenozoic Laboratory in Beijing.

Shortly after her arrival in China, Lucile met Pierre Teilhard de Chardin at a dinner given by Dr. Amadeus Grabau. She was later to recall that the meeting with him changed her life. She moved into a house where she was able to change part of the temple that the owners had used for ancestor worship into a studio for her work. Lucile and Pierre became lifelong friends. He was a frequent teatime guestin the little courtyard at her house in Beijing, where hours were passed in conversation regarding his philosophy, watching the potted figs ripen and lettuces and tomatoes growing in the kitchen garden. In 1932 Lucile completed her first bust of Teilhard and worked on Chinese figures of wrestlers, acrobats ans children.

Over the years a copious correspondence was exchanged between the two friends, but long periods of time went by with little or no contact during the years of WW2 with major postal problems and when Lucile was in the USA and Pierre was in China. In August 1941, Lucile had reluctantly decided to leave China in face of the Japanese occupation and took up residence in Washington, D.C. Seven years passed before she and Teilhard met again, during his sixth visit to the U.S. in 1948. Their correspondence continued to within days of Teilhard's death in New York City, Easter Day, April 10, 1955. Lucile Swan died ten years later, also in New York, on May 2, 1965.

Among Lucile's best remembered works from her time in China are the portrait bust of Teilhard de Chardin, now at the Museum of Natural History in Paris, and a reconstruction (nicknamed "Nelly" by Teilhard) of one of the skulls of Sinanthropus, the Peking man. During this period Swan also modeled many studies of prominent Chinese and Western friends. Swan's artistry is especially evident in her clay figures of children, Chinese jugglers, sword dancers and other colourful characters that caught her eye.

Sources

• Wikipedia: Lucile Swan
• https://snaccooperative.org/
• King, Thomas M and Gilbert, Mary Wood, "The Letters of Teilhard de Chardin & Lucile Swan", Georgetown University Press, Washington DC, 1993.
• Mortier, Jeanne and Aboux, Marie-Louise, Editors, "Pierre Teilhard de Chardin ALBUM," Collins, St James Place, London, 1966.
• Fabel, Arthur and St. John, Donald, Editors, "Teilhard in the 21st Century", Chapter 4, "The Letters of Teilhard de Chardin and Lucille Swan", by Ursula King.Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York, 2007.