A(lexander) Stirling Calder - Selected Architectural Sculpture, Selected Other Works, Images, Sources & resources

Sculptor, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, the father of Alexander ‘Sandy’ Calder. He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1886–90), and in Paris (1890), and was based in Pittsfield, MA and New York City. He is known for public works, such as the ‘Swann Memorial’ in Philadelphia (1924), and for sculptural portraits.

Philadelphia Portal

Alexander Stirling Calder (January 11, 1870 – 1945) was an American sculptor, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Throughout his career Calder was frequently a teacher, variously teaching sculpture or anatomy at the Philadelphia Academy of the Fine Arts, the School of Industrial Art, in Philadelphia, the National Academy of Design in NYC and the Students Art League, also in NYC.

Selected Architectural Sculpture

Assisted father on Philadelphia City Hall, John McArthur Jr., architect, completed in 1893 Witherspoon Building Figures, Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia Pennsylvania 1898 – 1899 6 spandrel figures, Throop Polytechnic Institute (now the California Institute of Technology} 1906 Frieze, Missouri State Capitol, architects, Jefferson City, Missouri 1924 Figures of famous actors and actresses, I Miller Building, NYC 1928

Selected Other Works

Sundial, West Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1906 Henry Charles Lea Memorial, Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1911 Depew Fountain, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1916 (Calder finished this commission that was just begun by Bitter prior to his being killed) George Washington, Washington Square Arc, NYC 1916 Swann Memorial Fountain, Philadelphia Pennsylvania 1920 Gateposts, Asia, Africa, Europe & Stewardson architects, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1920s Leif Eriksson, Reykjavík, Iceland 1932 Shakespeare Memorial, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1926

Images

Sources & resources

Armstrong, Craven et al, 200 Years of American Sculpture, Whitney Museum of Art, NYC, 1976 Bach,Penny Balkin, Public Art in Philadelphia, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1992 Calder, A. NY 1974 Falk, Peter Hastings, ed., Who was Who in American Art, Sound View Press, Madison Connecticut, 1985 Gadzinski, Cunningham, Panhorst et al, American Sculpture in the Museum of American Art of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Museum of American Art of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1997 Hayes, Margaret Calder, Three Alexander Calders, Paul S Eriksson Publisher, Middlebury, Vermont, 1977 Kvaran, Einar Einarsson, American Architectural Sculpture unpublished manuscript, Opitz, Glenn B ed., Mantle Fielding’s Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors &