Mahonri M. Young

Mahonri M. Young (1877-1957), American sculptor, painter, and printmaker. Young found his subjects in the working class, and is best known for his bronze figures of laborers and boxers created in a rugged, naturalistic style.

Born Mahonri Mackintosh Young in Salt Lake City, Utah, he was a grandson of Mormon leader Brigham Young. Young dropped out of high school to become an illustrator. In 1899 he entered the Art Students League in New York City to study sculpture. He continued his art education in Paris at the Académie Julian, the Académie Colarossi, and the Académie Delacluze during the next few years. Young later taught at the Art Students League and at the School of American Sculpture.

Throughout his career, Young focused on depicting poor urban dwellers, as well as boxers, cowboys, and Native Americans. The first major sculptural work that Young completed, Stevedore (1904, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City), brought him immediate recognition. Instead of relying on precise detail to create the effect of movement in his bronze figures, Young achieved this through emphasis on pose and attitude.

Young traveled to the American Southwest in 1912. The works he created following that trip were among the earliest modern works of that region. He received commissions to make sculptures of representative members of the Apache, Navajo, and Hopi tribes for the American Museum of Natural History in New York (1912). Young also created pieces celebrating the Mormon Church, such as the enormous This is the Place (1947), a monument commemorating the Mormons' arrival in Salt Lake Valley, and a marble statue of Brigham Young (1950) in Statuary Hall, Washington, D.C. Many of Young's sculptures are on display at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.