Eagle's Nest Art Colony
[1] The Eagle's Nest Art Colony Association was founded in 1898 by American sculptor Lorado Taft on the bluffs flanking the east bank of the Rock River, overlooking Oregon, Illinois.
[2] The colony was started by eleven men, all artists, architects and art lovers affiliated with Taft in Chicago.
The original members were: Taft, Ralph Elmer Clarkson, Oliver Dennett Grover, Charles Francis Browne, Henry B. Fuller, Hamlin Garland, Horace Spencer Fiske, James Spencer Dickerson, Allen Bartlit Pond, Irving Kane Pond and Clarence Dickerson.
[4] The group began their search for a summer reprieve from Chicago a few years before the site along the Rock River was chosen.
[5] Taft and his peers looked toward Wisconsin after leaving Bass Lake, but Heckman invited the group to his home in Ogle County for the Fourth of July.
The lease provided 15 acres (6.1 ha) of land for US$1 per year with the stipulation that each colony member give a free lecture or demonstration in the area.
[6] Leslie A. Holmes proposed a "field campus" for Northern Illinois Teachers College in his inaugural address as president in 1948.
The buildings of the art colony, long neglected, were restored under the supervision of Paul Harrison, a professor at the college.
A small wooden building, the studio had a highly sloped roof which allowed large figures to be built inside.
Dickerson completed the construction with the help of a local builder and the finished product was intended to be a one-room building with a partition as the only interior division.
[10] In the summer of 1843, more than 50 years before the colony occupied the land, Margaret Fuller made her only visit to Oregon, Illinois.
Walking along the east bank of the Rock River during her visit, she noticed the natural spring at the base of the bluff.
The assignment required each student to create a human figure but left the subject of the sculpture to their collective choice.
[9][10] The natural spring, which originates in the limestone beneath Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, supplied the colony with water for cooking, drinking and for use in their swimming pools.
[12] The building was constructed after an Andrew Carnegie grant approval, and its first use came in October 1908 by Leon A. Malkielski, a colony member, for an exhibition of 100 paintings.
Hamlin Garland, a 1921 Pulitzer Prize recipient for literature, spoke at the Oregon library while he was a member of the Eagle's Nest Colony.
[13] The Soldiers' Monument is a Taft created sculpture that stands on the public square of the Old Ogle County Courthouse in Oregon.
Taft's oversized Classical female figure stands with her arms outstretched, clutching laurel wreaths.
