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Daniel Chester French is best known as the sculptor of the Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial. For more, see the first post in this series. In this post: a selection of works displayed in French’s studio.

General Joseph Hooker, 1903

French didn’t do equestrian sculptures often, but he did them well, presenting dignified, quietly heroic figures. The twist of the neck gives Hooker’s horse more life than the horses in most equestrian sculptures have. French believed in division of labor when appropriate: he asked Edward Clark Potter, who made his reputation as a sculptor of animals, to sculpt Hooker’s horse. Among Potter’s works are the lions in front of New York Public Library’s main branch on Fifth Avenue at 42nd St.

Hooker, a native of Hadley, Massachusetts, graduated from West Point, fought in the Seminole Wars, the Mexican-American War, and then the Civil War. He was defeated by Lee at Chancellorsville, but performed well under Grant and Sherman. The bronze of Hooker stands near the Massachusetts State House, Boston.

Genius of Creation, 1915

The model at Chesterwood is the center figure only of a huge sculpture displayed in front of Palace of Machinery at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, 1915. I haven’t found a record of the completed sculpture in SIRIS, so like the sculptures for the 1893 Columbian Exposition (and many other world’s fairs in that period), Genius was probably made of staff (plaster, cement, and jute fiber) rather than marble. SIRIS does list a work that sounds like this figure, “location unknown”.

Macomber writes in The Jewel City: Its Planning and Achievement (1915), p. 98:

According to French himself, this group might well have been called ‘The Angel of Generation.’ The winged figure, neither male nor female, but angelic, is veiled, suggesting the creative impulse as a blind command from unknown sources. The arms are raised in a gesture of creative command. It has wings, said French, because both art and the conception demanded these spiritual symbols. The man and woman against the rock whereon the angel sits are emblems of the highest types created. The man looks upward and outward with one hand clenched, ready to grapple with life. The woman reaches out for sympathy and support; her fingers find this in the hand of the man at the back of the rock. Man and woman are encircled by the snake, the earliest symbol of eternity and reproduction, a girue appearing, curiously enough, in every religion, and with much the same significance.

Immortal Love

The inspiration for the composition of Immortal Love was a photograph of Old Faithful erupting: you can see the clouds of steam behind the couple. A marble version is at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, with the title The Sons of God Saw the Daughters of Men That They Were Fair, 1923. (Many thanks to Dana Pilson, curatorial researcher at Chesterwood, for sending that information.) Chesterwood sells 14-inch reproductions of this plaster model.

Benediction, 1922

This was the central figure in a proposed monument to honor soldiers from Massachusetts who died during the First World War. French completed Benediction in 1922, the same year the Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial was dedicated. Although the World War I monument was never executed, French did have four bronze casts made of this figure. One of them is at Brookgreen Gardens, another at the Amon Carter Museum.

Audrey Munson

Audrey Munson was famous ca. 1900-1919 as a sculptor’s model. She was valued for her ability not just to strike a pose, but to conceive of a pose appropriate to the allegorical figures that were so popular at the time. Munson posed for sculptures for French and many others, including several in New York City: see here and here, for example. It was Audrey’s poses that sculptors captured, rather than her own face. So imagine my delight when one of the Chesterwood docents pointed out the head on this shelf, second from the left (behind a small model of Hooker), as a portrait of Audrey!

There’s also another head of Audrey in the studio. Many thanks to Dana Pilson at Chesterwood for providing the photograph.

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