Living Life to the Fullest The Art of Rosamonde Pinchot

had a choice in life as a young woman: to excel in one thing or to have fun doing many things.”

When I first met and spoke with artist Rosamonde Pinchot for this story, I was immediately delighted that she chose the latter. A woman of great warmth, sly humor, and rich talent, she relocated to Milford, PA, a year and a half ago.

The Pinchot name is very familiar to most people in the tri-state area and beyond. One of her paternal ancestors was an officer in Napoleon’s army. On her mother’s side, her grandfather, a famed automobile and airplane manufacturer, designed the first circular flight plane to become airborne in France. “The circular element was quite a feat,” she explains. “Most people believe the Wright Brothers were the first, but essentially all they did was glide an airplane from a high hill.”

Rosamonde’s great uncle, Gifford Pinchot, was the renowned 28th governor of Pennsylvania and the first chief of the U.S. Forest Service after it was established in 1905. Gifford enjoyed a close relationship with President Theodore Roosevelt, who shared Pinchot’s passion for the conservation of natural resources.

Born in Paris to an American father and a French mother, Rosamonde still shares the Pinchot commitment to conservation. Every time she sees a grand old tree being cut down in town, she gets frustrated and contacts someone in local government.

“It’s a shame that there aren’t more restrictions on this sort of thing. I can chop down a 200-year old tree on my property, but I can’t change the glass in my windows,” she laments, referring to her 1850s Milford home. “On top of that, I get agitated whenever I think back to the fact that nearly 80 percent of the old magnificent trees in the thousands of acres of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest in Washington State were destroyed by the logging industry and its road encroachments.”

But it is her love of both horses and art that led her into a quite fascinating life with a career in sculpting and jewelry making. Her life adventures and attitude also gave rise to a palpable joie de vivre. “We’re here only once,” she observes. “I say, make it fun.”

Her attraction to horses developed at a young age, when she thoroughly enjoyed riding with her family and friends. “Later, when I got to the United States and studied at Bennington College in Vermont,” she recalls, “one of my trotters ran into a farmer’s barn. I remember the farmer saying to me, ‘If you’re going to be running horses into my barn, at least let me train you how to handle them better.’ ”

Returning to France, she became one of that country’s first female jockeys. Asked how she remains so fit and trim, Rosamonde explains that she “sort of” adheres to “the jockey’s diet: steak and lettuce every day, with perhaps a bit of French dressing.” She later admits to loving smoked salmon, chicken, croissants, cheese souffle, pate de campagne, and a very chilled Blanc de Blanc on occasion.

Since she was a child, she was drawn to not just riding horses, but to bringing them to life through her art. She paints, draws, and has made exotic jewelry throughout her adult life, but her specialty to this day remains sculpting horseheads. Her latest work will be featured in the near future in the Harness Racing Museum & Hall of Fame in Goshen, New York.

Rosamonde relishes telling stories about “my vivid family,” and her home is filled with family photographs and cherished albums. Aunt Rosamond, after whom she was named, was a well-known American socialite and stage and film actress. One of her great uncles was Stephane Mallarme, a French poet and translator of Edgar Allan Poe’s works.

She also recalls a relative on her mother’s side who was a gifted painter of pastels and a great grandfather who owned a beer factory. “Unfortunately,” she laughs, “he lost five cents on every bottle of beer that was sold, so clearly he was not a great businessperson.” Now that she’s in Milford, Pinchot is “desperately seeking a really good art agent to represent me.”

“I’ve lived in Paris, New York, Nigeria, California, and other places,” she explains. “Who would have thought I’d end up in Milford, where my family enjoyed so many good times at the house.”

The “house” is Grey Towers, the Pinchot family’s summer estate, now a National Historic Site. “I met Great Uncle Gifford and his wife Cornelia for the first time at Grey Towers.” She smiles and laughs as she continues, “I was introduced first to Gifford, who then proceeded to introduce me to Aunt Cornelia, who was reclining on a couch in the great room before looking toward me. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ replied Cornelia, ‘Rosamond is dead,’ ” referring to her actress aunt, who died in 1938.

Her aunt’s name was spelled Rosamond, but her mother decided she should be named the more French Rosamonde. Her name originally combined the Germanic elements hros, meaning horse, and mind, meaning mud. So it’s only appropriate that Rosamonde works with horses and mud.

When Pinchot settled in Milford a year and a half ago, it was to be closer to family. She hasn’t been back to Grey Towers since she moved to Milford, but says she would relish a return visit.

Rosamonde’s horsehead sculptures have been featured in museums and fine art galleries frequently through the years. Her sculptures have been sold through galleries in New York City, including exhibitions at the Rockefeller Collection and the Empire Galleries, the Altermann Galleries in Dallas, and several galleries throughout California.

Rosamonde often begins the creative process by crafting small, detailed wax models that may eventually be used to become limited-edition crystal figures. This begins a very long and arduous process working with a foundry that scans the wax figure by computer and blows it up to a 36-inch size that is then covered in clay. Throughout the process, Rosamonde makes precise adjustments, particularly on the eyes and the mouth to express both the motion and the emotion as realistically and artistically as possible.

Once the piece is finalized, it is cast in copper and tin to create the bronze finish and then polished to the proper luster. “And finally,” she notes, “the patina is added, and that takes the work of the very best specialists.” Her current work-in-progress horsehead sculpture has taken over a year of working five-hour days.

Her paintings (she appears to be fondest of Peonies, which she created in pastels) have earned great respect, and her fine craft of jewelry making has also gained renown over the years. Her specialties, equine and African wildlife pendants and brooches in silver, gold, and precious stones, were featured in Cartier, Neiman Marcus, and Dunhill of London catalogs in the past.

But horses and horsehead sculptures remain closest to her heart. “Each sculpture I have created reflects my love of these incredibly affectionate animals. I chose many years ago to focus on sculptures as opposed to paintings or drawings because of the tactile nature of sculpting.” The use of her hands to create a three-dimensional work of art still visibly thrills her.

What’s next? Continuing to create art in her out-of-town studio, Rosamonde is currently having renovations done to her Milford home, and “I’ve got a children’s book in mind (about horses and sculpting, of course), and I’d love to create large urns that would have a horse mane ribbon attached.” And with the engineers’ blood that runs in her family, she’s lately had ideas about designing a porpoise swimsuit with a motor in the fins.

“Many of my friends are starting to die, and at this stage in my life, I like to keep active with my art and what I call my ‘twisted’ ideas because, frankly, I try to stay more alive than dead.”

Rosamonde Pinchot: a gifted artist, a fascinating storyteller, and someone of whom her French and American ancestors would be extremely proud.

Will Voelkel is an occasional contributor to the Journal and a big fan of the regional arts scene.

By Amy Bridge