HERBERT HASELTINE AMERICAN, 1877-1962

Herbert Haseltine was the son of a painter, William Stanley Haseltine. He was born in Rome, and after attending Harvard University studied painting and drawing in Munich, Rome and Paris. He became a pupil of Aimé Nicolas Morot in 1905, and under Morot he began to model his compositions in three dimensions as studies for painting. His interest in sculpture grew and he presented a polo group, Riding Off, to the 1906 Salon where it won honourable mention. The Empty Saddle is from the first period of Haseltine's oeuvre, when he focussed on equine subjects worked out in realist form.
Haseltine served as an inspector of prisoner-of-war camps during the Great War. These years inspired him to create a series of sculptures evoking the tragedy of the war. The Empty Saddle, depicting a riderless horse, was made in memory of the members of the Cavalry Club of London who lost their lives in the war. Another version of this model is in the Fine Art Museums of San Francisco.

RELATED LITERATURE
American Sculpture, p.609