Grounds for Sculpture: An Art-Full Garden

An easy day trip, this park is a unique juxtaposition of plants and sculpture.

Written and photographed by Carole Ottesen

In Sailing the Seine, fashioned after Manet’s painting Argenteuil, nature and art unite. Sculpted ducks float alongside real boats, creating a backdrop for life-sized, cast bronze figures.

Situated between Philadelphia and New York in the small town of Hamilton, New Jersey, Grounds for Sculpture is 35-acre sculpture park featuring contemporary works. It is an equally magnificent garden in which plants and sculptures combine in splendid and, often, symbiotic relationships.

Project architect Brian Carey of AC/BC Associates, New York, turned what was the pancake-flat Hamilton County fairgrounds into an undulating landscape in which each sculpture combines with plants in a setting that enhances its impact. G. Frederick Morante’s Relative rises from a rectangular reflecting pool, set against a hedge of neatly clipped river birch. Charlotte Rosengren’s Siren of the Woods is surrounded by a maze of giant Arundo grass. Martha Pettigrew’s Gossip is set off by a rare, umbrella-shaped Camperdown elm.

The dark silhouette of a 19th Century sailboat sculpture floats
on the lake behind Johnson’s If It Were Time.

The aesthetic pleasure of this park begins well before visitors reach the main gate on Sculptor’s Way. To guide visitors through the surrounding industrial neighborhood, director and curator of Grounds for Sculpture Brooke Barrie and her staff have installed sculptures adjacent to the factories and county offices.

Phillip Shore’s metal sculpture Armored graces the front lawn of the Department of Water Pollution Control for Hamilton County, and Spirit of Freedom, a figure on a giant white horse, by Andrzej Pitynski, faces the American Standard factory, manufacturer of bathroom and kitchen fixtures.

Along Klockner Avenue, what looks at first glance like a father helping his daughter learn to ride a two-wheeler is First Ride. It is one of the life-sized statues by the park’s founder, Johnson & Johnson heir .

J. Seward Johnson, Jr. His sculptures elicit double takes wherever they are installed because of their realistic depiction of ordinary people in everyday situations.

Johnson’s Dejeuner Déjà Vu, based on Manet’s painting Le Dejeuner
sur l’Herbe, is discretely tucked into woodland just off the main path
through the garden.

Eleven of Johnson’s works based on paintings from the Impressionist period are tucked into discrete places throughout the park. Discovering them lends a visit to Grounds for Sculpture a sense of unfolding adventure. For example, visitors walking the main path through the garden may not notice a small opening in the woodland. Or if they do, they may wish they hadn’t. A glimpse of bare flesh suggests that what is happening in the undergrowth ought to be conducted in a more private place. Slowly, recognition dawns.

Picnicking in the woods are the characters from Edouard Manet’s Dejeuner sur l’Herbe-in (and out) of costume. It is actually Johnson’s work, Dejeuner Déjà Vu, in which life-sized figures in a real landscape approximate the Manet painting. To reproduce the dappled sunlight on grass in the original painting’s background, Carey interplanted green Liriope with black mondo grass (Ophiopogon ‘Nigrescens’), creating a marriage of nature and art.

You can walk right into If It Were Time, the largest of Johnson’s
installations at Grounds for Sculpture, modeled after Manet’s painting
Terrace at Sainte-Andresse.

As you stroll the grounds, the interplay of natural and handcrafted beauty presents unexpected pleasures at every turn. The nautical backdrop of Johnson’s Sailing the Seine, based on Manet’s painting entitled Argenteuil, is a real lake on which float two real boats, similar to those in the painting.

There is a café at Grounds for Sculpture with an adjacent outdoor dining room, its tables shaded by a grove of Japanese maples. At one of the tables, a young swain leans toward his stiffly upright female companion. Nearby, a mutton-chopped waiter in a long white apron looks on. But this café is self-serve and the waiter won’t refill your coffee cup. He and the couple at the table compose another of Johnson’s works, Eye of the Beholder.

The café is a pleasant spot to relax after a day wandering the park. Or, visitors can dine on the outdoor terrace overlooking an iris-fringed lake at Rat’s, a restaurant adjacent to the park that is named for Johnson’s favorite character in the classic children’s book, The Wind in the Willows.

In the background of Johnson’s Were You Invited, uninvited to Renoir’s
The Luncheon of the Boating Party, are cast bronze figures of Johnson
and fellow artists.

The Scoop

Grounds for Sculpture is located at 18 Fairgrounds Road, adjacent to the Johnson Atelier Technical Institute of Sculpture in Hamilton, N.J., two miles east of Trenton, N.J. Open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., closed Mondays and holidays. Admission for adults is $5 Tuesday though Thursday; $8 on Friday and Saturday; $12 on Sunday. For directions and information, call 609-586-0616 or visit groundsforsculpture.org.