This striking angel is the work of Brenda Putnam, but the cemetery’s site is vague and confusing on dates. It says that the bronze angel was cast “after 1910” as a replica of an original granite sculpture. The earliest dated Putnam work listed in her sparse Wikipedia article is from 1917. Brenda Putnam would have been twenty years old in 1910; she would thus have been a teenager when the granite version was done, if the date “1910” means anything at all. Henry Kirke Porter, identified as “the best-known Porter here” by the cemetery site, died in 1921, and perhaps that gives us a better guess at the date of the sculpture.
3 responses to “Porter Angel, Allegheny Cemetery”
[…] angel and a cross, similar in conception to the Porter monument, but very different in […]
[…] At first glance this mausoleum gives one the impression that it is nothing more than a big box of dead Snyders. But the tasteful details and fine proportions reward a longer look. It is plain with the plainness of elegance, not with the plainness of efficiency. Next to it stands the Porter angel. […]
I am trying to improve the Brenda Putnam wikipedia article (my friend BoringHistoryGuy has already made huge strides) and discovered your angel and am wondering if you know any more.