Alexander Phimister Proctor - Images, Further reading

Sculptor, born in Bozanquit, Ontario, Canada. He studied in New York City at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League (1887), worked with Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1894), and lived in Connecticut and the Western states. He was known for his Western subjects, such as Bronco Buster (1918).

Alexander Phimister Proctor (September 27, 1860 – September 4, 1950) was an American sculptor and one of her foremost animaliers, born in Bozanquit, Ontario, his family moved to Denver, Colorado when he was young.

Growing up on the frontier, Proctor early developed into a skilled woodsman and hunter — interests that remained with him for the rest of his life.

Besides his gun, Proctor took pencils and a sketching pad with him on his trips through the Rocky Mountains.

In 1885 Proctor sold a homestead that he had acquired in Colorado and used the proceeds to move to New York City with the intention of studying art. Proctor was further called upon to produce works of various Western themes, mostly figures of native animals, but also a cowboy and Indian that were to form the genesis of his later works, The Bucking Bronco and On the War Trail, both found in Denver.

Proctor moved to Paris to continue his studies.

Settling in New York City, Proctor turned out a large number of public monuments in the ensuing decades.

On a hunting trip to Alaska in 1947 Proctor shot a bear, 70 years to the day that he had bagged his first one.

Proctor died in Palo Alto, California, where he was living with his daughter, just a few days before his 90th birthday.

A sculptor of the "old school," Proctor resisted even the vestiges of modernism that many of his contemporaries adopted. Sherman Memorial (horse only), Grand Army Plaza, New York, New York, 1892-1903 Standing Pumas, Prospect Park, Brooklyn, New York, 1898 Two Griffins, Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri, 1904 Lions for the McKinley Monument, Buffalo, New York, 1907 Piney Branch Bridge Panthers, Sixteenth Street Bridge, Washington, D.C., 1910 Tigers, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, 1911 Buffalo, Q Street Bridge, Washington, D.C., 1914 Bucking Bronco, Civic Center, Denver, Colorado, 1920 Theodore Roosevelt As a Rough Rider, Portland, Oregon, 1922 On the War Path, Civic Center, Denver, Colorado, 1923 The Circuit Rider, Salem, Oregon, 1924 The Pioneer Mother, Kansas City, Missouri, 1925 Arlington Memorial Bridge Buffalo Heads, Washington, D.C., 1927 The Western Sheriff [Tillman D. Lee and Young Soldier, Dallas, Texas, 1935 Texas Mustangs, Austin, Texas, 1948

Images

Bucking Bronco, Denver CO

McKnight Memorial, Wichita KS

Pioneer Mother, Kansas City, MO

Tiger, Princeton NJ

Further reading

Craven, Wayne, Sculpture in America, Thomas Y. Crowell Co, NY, NY 1968 Hassrick, Peter H, Wildlife and Western Heroes: Alexander Phimister Proctor, Sculptor, Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas 2003 Proctor, Alexander Phimister, edited by Hester Elizabeth Proctor, Alexander Phimister Proctor, Sculptor in Buckskin: An Autobiography by Alexander Phimister Proctor, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, OK 1971 Proske, Beatrice Gilman, Brookgreen Gardens Sculpture, Brookgreen Gardens, South Carolina, 1968 Taft, Lorado, History of American Sculpture, The MacMillan Company, NY, NY 1925