Art: Horse-Sculptor Chap

After seven years of intermittent carving, stroking, currying and patting, 70-year-old Herbert Haseltine had completed at last his “masterpiece”—a bigger-than-life-size plaster cast of famed race horse Man o’ War.

Haseltine hopes to be able to unveil the final bronze statue at Faraway Farm, Ky. by next March, in time for Man o’ War’s 31st birthday party. He labored so long, he explained in Paris last week, because “It’s not just a horse, it’s Man o’ War. I loved him best. A perfect gentleman, impeccable in conformation, beautiful yet not effeminate, with an eagle eye and a noble carriage. Yet I must say he was not without vanity. He’d be dozing in his stall and some visitors would arrive. He would rouse himself, get to his feet and give them that look of the eagles—lofty and over their heads you know. But he’d let me push him or pull him around. Of course there was a little cupboard love involved—I always had something in my pocket for him.”

Sculptor Haseltine’s brilliant, blinkered devotion to animal subjects has made him tops in a narrow field. He has done prize pigs, sheep and dogs as well—some of them in 24-carat gold inlaid with precious gems—but horses are his forte, at a fee of $1,800 to $30,000 apiece. “I used to feel a bit put out,” says Haseltine with a deprecating shrug, “when people referred to me as ‘the horse-sculptor chap.’ “

Born in Rome of U.S. parents, Haseltine was raised in the saddle, once rode a polo pony up the 107 steps of the Altieri Palace just for a lark. At one time or another he owned three lions, several macaws, an Indian bull, a Syrian ram, assorted Asiatic wildcats, plenty of monkeys. Some of them he modeled.

As his reputation as a sculptor spread, he was commissioned by Edward VII to do the King’s mount, Kildare. Then Queen Alexandra introduced him to her barouche horse, Splendor, George V sent around his great Shire stallion, Field Marshal V, and the young gentleman’s career was assured. Later, in the U.S., he met and molded for bronze the late Mrs. Payne Whitney’s Twenty Grand, George Widener’s Eight Thirty, Jock Whitney’s Royal Minstrel, Marshall Field’s Stimulus, Sir Galahad Third (“You wouldn’t turn around to look at Galahad, but I must confess he had nice manners”), stablefuls more. His next job: an equestrian statue for the grave of Field Marshal Sir John Dill in Arlington Cemetery.