Daniel Chester French - AAAS members, Notable works, Other works, Architectural Sculpture, Publications, Reference

Sculptor, born in Exeter, New Hampshire, USA. He grew up in Cambridge and Concord, MA, and studied anatomy with William Rimmer in Boston (early 1870s) and drawing with William Morris Hunt. He also studied briefly in New York City with John Quincy Adams Ward and then in Italy (1874). He returned to Washington, DC (1876) and became the most popular American sculptor of the period, known for his elegant academic and historical works, as in the ‘Minute Man’ (1873–5), the seated bronze of John Harvard (1882), and Abraham Lincoln (1918–22) in the Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC. He was based in New York City after 1888 and at a summer home, Chesterwood, in Stockbridge, MA, which is now a museum exhibiting much of his work.

He was born at Exeter, New Hampshire, the son of Henry Flagg French, a lawyer, who for a time was Assistant Secretary of the United States Department of the Treasury. While visiting relatives in Brooklyn, New York City, he spent a month in the studio of John Quincy Adams Ward, then began to work on commissions, and at the age of twenty-three received from the town of Concord, Massachusetts, an order for his well-known statue The Minute Man, which was unveiled April 19, 1875 on the centenary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord.

AAAS members

Daniel Chester French

Notable works

Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial Standing Lincoln" at the Nebraska State Capitol, Lincoln, Nebraska Alma Mater, campus of Columbia University in New York City The Angel of Death and the Sculptor, Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City Angel of Peace - George Robert White Memorial, Public Garden in Boston, Massachusetts Beneficence', Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana Casting Bread Upon the Waters - George Robert White Memorial, Public Garden in Boston, Massachusetts Rufus Choate memorial, Old Suffolk County Court House, Boston, Massachusetts, 1898 Clark Memorial, Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts Republic the colossal centerpiece of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893. Concord Minute Man, Old North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts Continents (sculpture)|Four Continents, Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House in New York City The John Harvard Monument, Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts Richard Morris Hunt Memorial, on the perimeter wall of Central Park, opposite the Frick Collection, in New York City Thomas Starr King monument San Francisco, California Memory (statue)|Memory, Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City Mourning Victory, Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City John Boyle O'Reilly Memorial, intersection of Boylston Street and Westland Avenue in Boston, Massachusetts Progress of the State, Minnesota State Capitol in Saint Paul, Minnesota Slocum Memorial, Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts Brooklyn and Manhattan, Brooklyn Museum in Brooklyn, New York

Other works

Death Staying the Hand of the Sculptor, a memorial for the tomb of the sculptor Martin Milmore, in the Forest Hills cemetery, Boston; Death and the Wounded Soldier, The Chapel of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, St. Paul's School, Concord, New Hampshire

Architectural Sculpture

America at War and Peace, US Customs House & Mullett architect (1876-1882) Pediment, New Hampshire Historic Society Building, Concord, New Hampshire,Guy Lowell, architect (1909-1911) Bronze doors, Boston Public Library, Boston, Massachusetts, McKim, Mead & White architects, (1884-1904) Quadriga, Six statues on entablature, Minnesota State Capitol, St. Paul, Minnesota, Cass Gilbert architect (1896-1901) Justice, Power, and Study, US Appellate Court House, NYC, James Lord architect (1900) Four Continents, New York Customs Building, NYC, Cass Gilbert architect, (1904) Jurisprudence and Commerce, Federal Building, Cleveland, Ohio, Arnold Brunner architect (1910) John Hampden, and Edward I, two attic figures, Cuyahoga County Building, Cleveland, Ohio, Lehman & White architects (1912) Wisconsin, figure surmounting the dome, Wisconsin State Capitol, Madison, Wisconsin, George Post architect (1914) Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C., Henry Bacon architect (1923)

Publications

Caffin, American Masters of Sculpture (New York, 1903) Taft, ''History of American Sculpture (New York, 1903) Coughlan, in Magazine of Art (1901) Caffin, in International Studio, volumes xx (1903), lx (1910), and lxvi (1912)

Reference

Kvaran, Einar Einarsson, Architectural Sculpture of America