Note Type
Historical Background and OverviewNote
Born in Kentucky, Clifford Berryman (1869-1949) moved to Washington, D.C., in 1886 after being appointed draftsman to the United States Patent Office. Here, he began submitting sketches to the Washington Post, which got him enough attention in 1891 to be made an understudy for their political cartoonist, whose post Berryman took over in 1896. His 1902 cartoon showing President Theodore Roosevelt refusing to shoot a bear cub during a hunting trip in Mississippi inspired the toymaker Morris Michtom to create the “Teddy Bear” doll. Later, Berryman worked for the Washington Evening Star newspaper from 1907 to 1949, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1944. As a member of the Club, his skills as a caricaturist came in handy as he did caricatures of early Club presidents from Henry Kirke Bush-Brown to Lewis Moneyway
Sculptor Brenda Putnam (1890-1975) was born and raised in Washington, D.C., where her father Herbert Putnam was the Librarian of Congress. She first studied sculpture at the National Cathedral School for Girls, and later at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, the Art Students League of New York, and the Corcoran School of the Arts. Her best-known work is the figure of Puck (1932) from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a marble sculpture created for an exterior fountain at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Works by Putnam are also in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Putnam created the plaster bust in just two hours in 1935.
Source: Docents Guide, The Arts Club of Washington, 2022