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• Date: 1866, dedicated 1869
• Sculptor: John Quincy Adams Ward
• Medium & size: Bronze, over lifesize.
• Location: Central Park, between the Mall (including Shakespeare & friends) and Sheep Meadow.

In the early 19th century, settlers and Indians were fighting acre by bloody acre for land in the West. John Quincy Adams Ward (1830-1910), who sculpted Indian Hunter, grew up in Urbana, Ohio. In his grandfather’s time, that was the frontier. But by 1869, Ward was living in New York City and the frontier was two thousand miles away. Few of the city’s residents had ever seen an Indian, and Indians began to be viewed through rose-colored glasses. This is the first sculpture of an American Indian to be erected in New York.

Ward’s fellow American-born sculptors Thomas Ball, Hiram Powers, and Horatio Greenough trained and spent most of their working lives in Italy, where they created portraits in the neoclassical style and mythological or allegorical works.

Ward, on the other hand, trained and then worked in America – mostly in New York. As an apprentice, he helped create George Washington at Union Square, and was credited on the sculpture as “assistant”. Washington, dedicated in 1856, was the first life-size sculpture to stand outdoors in New York since the statue of King George III was pulled down at the beginning of the American Revolution.

Ward believed that American sculpture should show American subjects. In 1859, he exhibited a small model of Indian Hunter – a novel subject, and well executed. A cast of that version at the Metropolitan Museum of Art shows the figure with Caucasian rather than Indian facial features.

Soon afterwards, Ward traveled to the Dakotas. For the full-size model exhibited in 1865, he corrected the facial features. The model was admired by August Belmont, a member of the Board of Commissioners of the Central Park. Belmont, architect Richard Morris Hunt, and two dozen other prominent citizens donated money to pay for a large-scale version of Indian Hunter in Central Park.

Indian Hunter was Ward’s big break. Dozens of commissions followed, and for decades, Ward was “the dean of American sculptors.” But the sculpture that Ward requested to guard his grave in Urbana, Ohio, was a copy of Indian Hunter.

More

• In Manhattan, John Quincy Adams Ward’s works include Indian Hunter, Washington, Greeley, Holley, Conkling, Dodge ,and Shakespeare (Outdoor Monuments Chapters 6, 7, 11, 18, 24, 37), as well as the Seventh Regiment Memorial, 1869, and the Pilgrim, 1885. The original sculptures of the New York Stock Exchange pediment were Ward’s, but they’ve been replaced with copies. Brooklyn has his Henry Ward Beecher.
• Indian Hunter was the third sculpture to be placed in Central Park, following the Schiller monument in 1859 and the gory Eagles with Prey in 1863. It’s the first sculpture in the Park that was created by an American artist.
• The pedestal of Indian Hunter  was designed by Jacob Wrey Mould, who did much of the decorative work in Central Park (see here and here).
• Saint Gaudens was awarded the Farragut commission – his big break – at Ward’s recommendation, because Ward, being well established and in high demand, was too busy to take it on. See Artist-Entrepreneurs: Saint Gaudens, MacMonnies, and Parrish.
• For more on Central Park at this time, see my Central Park: The Early Years.
• In Getting More Enjoyment from Sculpture You Love, I demonstrate a method for looking at sculptures in detail, in depth, and on your own. Learn to enjoy your favorite sculptures more, and find new favorites. Available on Amazon in print and Kindle formats. More here.
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