Unique and remarkable ALS, three pages on two 8 x 10.5 sheets, Metropolitan Club Washington, D.C. letterhead, no date but circa 1926. The famed sculptor writes Jesse Gove Tucker, a fellow artist who collaborated with Borglum on Mount Rushmore and Stone Mountain, about his plans for the famed South Dakota landmark. In full: “This is the first time I’ve been alone for it seems weeks and now only because a friend has failed in an appointment = so I’m sending you a line - I’ve had a two hours talk with Norbeck, who you know is head of the Black Hills park. I can’t tell you all we talked about but it amounts to this. He goes home as soon as congress adjourns and jumps at once in to the monument work = meantime I go to Texas on the fifteenth stopping in Raleigh: where you and I should have a talk = that talk should deal with the question - number of men - money necessary to start and possibly cut the Washington Head on shoulder of cliff this summer.
Very little cutting required, state will furnish power drills, tents and studio. They have some money = I shall not need any this year, as much as I need that work shall be under way. I want to make the models small one is now done - Then I want to turn the job over to you or Villa under my guidance. When we meet we will go carefully into costs and I will fix things so you can take up the work as you wish. It would mean a great deal to me to have this going at once - please do not say anything about it but bear in mind the stone is this shape. So you see there is little real cutting. [Borglum has then sketched Mount Rushmore and the bust of George Washington with a tiny “man” on top of it]
I want if possible - you send a couple of days with me at Raleigh and then I’ll push on to Texas although I don’t want my plans known. The Big Sims needed for the big work is well in sight - and I have no worry about it = What we must do now is organize our selves - and start = The Stephens Statue came from the Governor’s Committee of the State of Ga. - and I’m curious to see what the effect will be in Atlanta = Coin Sale here is failure - This is their final effort = and now they tell me Lackman has quit and a cheaper contractor is to do the work.
What this all means I don’t know - but what is really being done is as disgraceful as it would be possible to imagine - I did not believe when they failed to get a sculptor - failed to get money - failed to get public sympathy they would still persist in letting a man of this commercial type of stone cutter contract for work this report tells me they are doing wrong. Well my affairs are going better - It’s time and the long sad service is over—that is I have plenty of new and very rememrative work in hand = that is beginning to pay above my expenses = give my love to your dear family.” In fine condition, with light soiling and writing lightly showing through from opposing sides. Accompanied by a typed transcript of the letter and a custom portfolio.
The lengthy “talk with Norbeck” was a meeting between Borglulm and South Dakota Senator Peter Borbeck, Mount Rushmore's great political patron who helped raise nearly $1 million for the project during the Great Depression. In 1923, state historian Doane Robinson came up with the idea of carving a mountain in the Black Hills as a way to promote South Dakota tourism and found Borglum—a flamboyant, grandiose sculptor—who could do it. This, despite the fact that his other mountain-carving enterprise—Stone Mountain in Georgia—had come to a standstill due to a lack of funding.
Following a meeting with Robinson, Borglum suggested a national subject for Rushmore: presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson were added to the program soon afterward. Borglum would begin work on the monument a year after he wrote this letter, and clearly had a vision in mind for its appearance, as evidenced by the incredible drawing he has incorporated into the text! The Mount Rushmore National Memorial ultimately became a story of the expansion of the United States in its first 150 years. The historical significance of this correspondence is remarkable, and is topped off with a hand-drawn sketch of Borglum’s massive creation drawn by the sculptor himself! Pre-certified John Reznikoff/PSA/DNA and RRAuction COA.
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