Milwaukee’s Forest Home Cemetery is filled with many grand sculptures that mark gravesites, but there’s one sculpture from the late Victorian era that is going to be celebrating a homecoming of sorts.
The life-sized bronze sculpture called the Angel of Peace stands at the plot of the Fitch family.
"It's a work commissioned we believe between 1902 to 1907, we don't know the exact time," notes Brian Fette, Forest Home volunteer docent and sculpture curator. "The Fitches were a prominent Milwaukee banking family ... At one point the Fitch family and the Mitchell family merged their banks to form what became Marine Bank."
Fette adds that one of their sons, Elliot Grant Fitch, was the person most responsible for the creation of the Marine Bank Tower, which is now Chase Tower — the home of WUWM. Outside of banking, the Fitch family's legacy also includes the work of the maternal head of the family, Martha Eliza Fitch.
"She was one of the all-time power women of Milwaukee," says Fette. "Her husband of course being a banker didn't hurt when she went to found the Women's Club of Wisconsin with a group of other prominent women as well. They were able to get advice of how to go out and sell stock certificates to raise money, and Milwaukee became the only city in the United States where women paid for and erected their own building. And then Martha was also very involved in the education of women and founded an organization called the College Endowment Association, which still exists today."
It is believed that Martha Fitch was involved and most likely the one who commissioned the bronze angel, although there are no specific records to indicate when the statue was installed.
"William Grant Fitch and Martha bought a plot at Forest Home believing it was going to be for them," explains Fette. "And the tragedy — and you see this in the angel — is that the first person to be buried there was their son Edward who dies at the age of 22 right in the prime of life. And the following year Martha's husband William dies."
Another ten years go by before the angel monument is erected, and Fette says they know that Martha traveled "constantly" to Europe even when she left Milwaukee to live in Santa Barbara, Calif. Her son William Allen was an impressionist painter who studied in Paris at the same time as the sculpture of the angel.
"So some of the past is known, and it's just frustrating that you know just enough, that you feel you should know the full story," says Fette.
Some of the past is known, and it's just frustrating that you know just enough that you feel you should know the full story.Brian Fette, Forest Home Cemetery volunteer docent & sculpture curator
The Angel of Peace had been hidden away in basement storage after a wave of vandalism hit the Forest Home about six years ago. The monument was found by grounds crew cut from its base and turned, yet still resting on its base. In March of 2022, Fette and Forest Home Preservation Association’s executive director Sara Tomlin met for the first time to look at the sculpture to get more clues about its story.
"Our records are actually pretty impeccable for a cemetery of our age, being that we were established in 1850. However, as far as what goes on the plot that someone's purchased, we really don't have very many records at all of that. We were more in line with just what the business was of being a cemetery." explains Tomlin. "We actually didn't have contact with family members from that plot to be able to talk to them about what we were going to do [with the statue], so it got put in the basement. Then Brain started asking questions about it," she jokingly adds.
As Fette crawled around with a flashlight trying to find any markers on the statue, he discovered the name of a foundry in Berlin, Germany cast into the angel. A signature was also cut in, which was legible except for the last letter. "So I contacted the foundry in Berlin, which believe it or not is still in existence, and I showed the curator a picture of it." The curator revealed the identify of the artist to be Martin Schauss.
"It turns out [Schauss] is one of the most decorated sculptors of Imperial Germany, and here's a work sitting out in the open in Milwaukee and no one knows what it is," says Fette.
The Angel of Peace, or "Friedensengel," was originally a marble piece sculpted for a client when Schauss was in Rome in 1899. This marble angel that still exists today was also exhibited at the Great Art Exhibition of Berlin in 1902. "I actually found a catalog online and found that this work was there — we even know what room it was in! So we have total proof," says Fette.
"This work that's been sitting out in the open for 120 years that we don't know what it is, it's by Germany's highest-awarded artist. Shouldn't we be telling people about it? Is there any way to find the money to get it restored?," he recalls.
With more clues in place for the Angel's history, Tomlin took on the mission of getting in contact with the remaining members of the Fitch family to raise money, starting with the granddaughter of Elliot Grant Fitch.
"She was not someone who we were in contact with when the theft happened, but she's someone who became what we call our lot representative who gets to make decisions about the plots, and she is in contact with a lot of other relatives," notes Tomlin. Fitch family descendants from Australia, France, California and Oregon raised the money for the monuments restoration. After years in storage and time spent away for restoration, there will be an official rededication of the Fitch Angel on Saturday, Sept. 21.
"For so many years the cemetery's just been thought of as a cemetery," says Tomlin. "But because of our age and because of all the important people who have been buried there, if you see it from a different lens there's so much more to the cemetery — and a lot of it is in our sculpture," says Tomlin.
"We are an outdoor museum, and we have works that people would fly over Milwaukee to see," adds Fette. "It's a place I believe to learn the most about the rich history of Milwaukee, but in doing so are we going to disturb those who are there? The answer, we believe, is come and admire a beautiful place and look at this angel."
