Charles Rumsey

American sculptor Charles Cary Rumsey was one of the artists who was entered at the Olympics posthumously. He was known as a famous polo player and died in 1922 in a traffic accident. Rumsey studied in Harvard and at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris before opening a studio in New York. He worked mainly in bronze and designed mostly horse and rider sculptures, but also some other figural sculptures. After his death, he was inducted into the Polo Hall of Fame.

There were probably only the four bronze sculptures by polo players exhibited in Amsterdam. They all originated between 1910 and 1914 and were around 50 cm high and long. Models were befriended polo players from Rumsey’s Club, the Meadowbrook Polo Club on Long Island: Harrison Tweed (1885–1969), John Ruckman Fell, II (1890-1933), Francis “Skiddy” von Stade, Sr. (1884-1967), and Joseph Cornelius Rathborne (1883-1914).

There is no further information on the reliefs in the art catalog. However, it is known that Rumsey designed decorative, colored cement friezes for the Isaac L. Rice Memorial Stadium in the early 1920s with the theme of the Olympic Games, although the stadium was demolished in 1989. In 1938, the artist’s widow donated the plaster casts to the University of Buffalo, where they were installed in the Clark Gymnasium. They were removed in 1993, but were restored and used as a model for producing bronze casts. The three bronze reliefs were then installed on the north campus of the University of Buffalo. Copies of the frieze also adorned the Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam.