Public Sculptures By Daniel Chester French
French's education ended and career began in 1876 when he accepted a contract to produce a set of statues for the United States Post Office Department. He created statues for the Post Office throughout the 1880s. In 1883, French was commissioned to create John Harvard. For the rest of his career, French produced commissions for state, federal, and private groups as well as private individuals. In 1896, he moved his studio to Chesterwood, in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where it remained until his death. In 1912, French was appointed as chair of the United States Commission of Fine Arts. He continued to be on the commission until 1915, when he resigned to accept his most famous commission, Abraham Lincoln, which sits in the Lincoln Memorial. On October 7, 1931, French died in his sleep.
French was a prolific sculptor, creating 92 public sculptures from 1871 until his death in 1931. His sculptures are mostly in the eastern and midwestern United States, but one, Thomas Starr King, is in San Francisco, and two, General George Washington and the Marseillaise Memorial, are in France. The majority of the sculptures are bronze castings or made of stone, but Progress of the State is gilded copper and Alma Mater and The Republic are gilded bronze. Nearly all of French's works are solo, but eight, Ulysses S. Grant, General George Washington (Paris), Joseph Hooker, General George Washington (Chicago), General Charles Devens, Indian Corn, Wheat, and Progress of the State, were the result of a collaboration with Edward Clark Potter. General Philip H. Sheridan was a completion of an unfinished statue by John Quincy Adams Ward, and the Daniel Webster Memorial was completed by Margaret French Cresson after French's death.
Public sculpture
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References
Notes
- ^ The gilding has come off Alma Mater and Columbia University has opted not to replace it (Holzer 2019, p. 201).
- ^ Year or years that French worked on the statue
- ^ The exact coordinates are unknown.
Citations
- ^ Richman 1972, p. 97
- ^ Richman 1972, pp. 97–98
- ^ Richman 1972, pp. 98–99
- ^ Richman 1972, pp. 102–103
- ^ Richman 1972, pp. 103–104
- ^ Richman 1972, p. 105
- ^ Holzer 2019, p. 178
- ^ Holzer 2019, p. 265
- ^ Holzer 2019, p. 267
- ^ Holzer 2019, p. 309
- ^ Holzer 2019, p. 321
- ^ Holzer 2019, p. 323
- ^ Holzer 2019, p. 320
- ^ Holzer 2019, p. 322
Bibliography
- Holzer, Harold (2019). Monument Man: The Life and Art of Daniel Chester French (Kindle ed.). Hudson, NY: Princeton Architectural Press. ISBN 978-1616897536.
- Richman, Michael (1972). "The Early Public Sculpture of Daniel Chester French". American Art Journal. 4 (2): 97–115. doi:10.2307/1593936. ISSN 0002-7359. JSTOR 1593936.