Florence G. Lucius (1887-1962)
Research and Text by Jacqueline Yu, B.A. in Art History and East Asian Languages and Culture, Columbia University in the City of New York, 2024. Columbia Global Virtual Intern, 2023 – 2024.

Florence Gertrude Lucius (1887-1962) was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Although she had access to many of the famous artistic circles at the turn of the 20th century, Lucius left behind a relatively small archival footprint. Little is known about her childhood beside the fact that her father was the engineer who designed the Third and Ninth Avenue elevated railroads. As a teenager in the early 1900s, Lucius enrolled in courses at the Art Students’ League and quickly excelled. She earned an honorable mention for her work in 1906 and even became a class monitor. It was in this supervisory role that she met Jo Davidson, a talented sculptor who would later become her husband. In his unfinished autobiography “Between Sittings,” Davidson described Florence, “or Flossie, as we called her” as a “tall, Junoesque girl” with whom he quickly became infatuated (26). Along with their friends from the League, Davidson and Lucius would often go out to listen to music and dance. Once, they even took a trip upstate with their mutual friend Grace Mott Johnson, a sculptor who would later stay at 4 rue de Chevreuse. Davidson recalled:
[...] we took the Hudson River boat to Kingston. We went through the Swangum Mountains in New Jersey, Lake Mohonk and Minnewaska. We walked all day, stopping at some farmhouse at night, where they would feed us and give us lodgings. We, in turn, would entertain our various hosts along the way: Flossie played the organ which we often found in those farmhouses and we would all sing. I would play the mouth-organ and do a little jig. In this way we came into the lives of people who had never gone further than a few miles from their farms and they would see us off in the mornings with regret, making us promise to come back. We vowed we would and sincerely meant it… It was all a wonderful new experience (Davidson 27).

Although Davidson was romantically interested in Lucius at this time, it is unclear if the pair were officially a couple. Sometime before 1910, the two fell out of touch and Lucius left for Paris to study under famed French sculptor Antoine Bourdelle. She lived at the Girls’ Art Club and was an active, successful member of the American artistic community abroad. Lucius participated in the 1910 and 1911 American Woman’s Art Association (AWAA) exhibitions, even serving on the Reception Committee in 1910. Her plaster sculptures were also shown at the 1910 Salon d'automne ("Mère et enfant") and the Salon des artistes français: 1910 ("Le Rêveur") and 1911 ("Les danseuses").

In May 1912, Lucius returned to New York. A year later, she exhibited at the Gorham Galleries in a group show highlighting sculpture by American women. Her “Dancing Group” received particular acclaim, with the New York Times describing it as “one of the most powerful works in the room.” The review offered high praise: “The simplification of the lines and the energy of the movement are obviously the result of a strong artistic conviction, but the humanity of the figures remains an important interest. In the other figure exhibited by the same artist the simplification is pushed farther, although kept well on this side of abstraction, but the line is not sufficiently expressive to justify its drastic treatment” (“News and Notes of the Art World,” SM14).
For the next ten years, Lucius achieved moderate success. She returned to the Gorham Galleries in 1914 and 1916 for a group show of recent American sculpture. In January 1919, she exhibited at the Bourgeois Gallery, where her “chunky” nudes were poorly reviewed by the New York Tribune (Cortissoz D7). Undeterred by negative critics, two months later Lucius staged a two-person show at the Whitney Studios with long-time friend Grace Mott Johnson. This time, the New York Tribune was laudatory, describing it as “an exhibition where two widely different forms of sculpture make a harmonious whole.” In addition to her “primitive” nudes, Lucius also exhibited her “Dancing Group,” which was extolled for its “rhythm” (“Random Impressions in Current Exhibitions” B9). Perhaps inspired by the success of her “lithe young figures,” Lucius exhibited another multi-figure sculpture, “Garden Group,” at an exhibition in May at the Touchstone Galleries in Washington, D.C.
Lucius returned to the Whitney Studio once more in January 1926, partnering with French artist Jane Poupelet, who exhibited drawings. The New York Times praised the show:
The sculptress has made a so-called ‘speaking likeness’ without permitting it to become ridiculous. She has modeled a face in all the antics and contortions of expressing itself and its emotions, but has turned to style and design a twisted mouth, one eye higher than the other or a wriggling nose. The conventional portrait painter would not dare to make a head quite so real; the modernist is too often afraid of realism. Florence Lucius is a designer who can use facts (“Art Galleries Offer Rich Variety” X12).
This review astutely reflected Florence’s philosophy for her artistic practice. According to her obituary in the Washington Post, Lucius “shunned the contemporary art world… considered herself a neoclassicist and held strongly unfavorable views on abstract art” (“Jo Davidson Widow, 75” B10). This rejection of new developments may explain her somewhat stagnant career, especially in later years.
Between exhibitions, Lucius taught sculpture classes at the Modern School alongside Winold Reiss and William Zorach, who was married to AWAA alum Marguerite Thompson Zorach. At some point before 1926, Lucius appears to have married American sculptor William Grimm. Although no public legal records exist of their union, Grimm exhibited portraits of his “wife” in galleries across New York City and Paris (Patterson 50; Bal 5). The New York Herald also reported that the couple stayed in a villa near Saint-Paul-de-Vence in the South of France and would frequently visit Paris together.
From 1928 to 1939, there is little public information on the whereabouts of Florence Lucius. According to Jo Davidson’s autobiography, they bumped into each other in Paris in 1939, which brought him a renewed sense of purpose. The two quickly began a romantic relationship and, in 1941, Davidson decided to bring Lucius along when he was commissioned to create busts of the presidents of the South American republics. He writes:
When I asked to have Florence accompany me as my assistant, I had another idea – I wanted to marry her. I had known her since my art student days before I went to Paris. I had been in love with her then. It was puppy love, but real nevertheless and now this old feeling and need for each other came right back. Anyhow I thought that it would be a wonderful idea to get married at sea. I was very happy when she agreed (Davidson 322-323).

Although they could not be married offshore due to legal reasons, they eventually wed in Chacao, a suburb of Caracas, Venezuela, on May 15th, 1941. After their honeymoon, World War II delayed their plan to return to Paris, so the newlyweds settled at Stone Court Farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. There, Lucius cared for Davidson through his numerous heart attacks and several major commissions, including a bust of Helen Keller, Anatole France, George Bernard Shaw, Rudyard Kipling, and F.D.R. The two often traveled between Pennsylvania, New York, and, when the war was finally over, to Israel and back to France. In 1952, he and Florence were living in a small village near Tours, France, where Jo Davidson passed away from a heart attack. He was 68 and left behind two sons from a previous marriage with Yvonne Kerstrat who had died in 1934 ("Jo Davidson Dies").
After the death of her husband, Lucius devoted her time to preserving his legacy. She donated Davidson’s papers to the Library of Congress in 1953. With the help of his former stonecutter Gino Stagetti, she turned Davidson’s studio in Paris into a museum showcasing his work. Lucius continued painting for the rest of her life, but she never exhibited again. In August 1962, Florence Lucius passed away unexpectedly from a cerebral hemorrhage.
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