Birthday of Daniel Chester French | National Portrait Gallery

Sculptor Daniel Chester French was born 160 years ago today.

Bronze relief portrait of Daniel Chester French — Daniel Chester French, / By Mary Evelyn Beatrice Longman / Bronze relief , 1926 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; transfer from the Smithsonian American Art Museum; gift of the artist, 1936

It is difficult, if not impossible, to avoid the presence of Daniel Chester French in Washington, D.C.

The Lincoln Memorial, dedicated in 1922, contains French’s statue of Abraham Lincoln, which is possibly the most prominent portrait of the sixteenth president of the United States in the world. One might argue that the obverse of the Lincoln penny is a more widely distributed and more widely known image of Lincoln. However, the penny's reverse contains a micro-image of French's seated Lincoln within the larger memorial, and one cannot have the head of the penny without the tail, reinforcing the Lincoln Memorial's ubiquitous recognition.

Biographer Adeline Adams wrote of French:

No American sculptor has received a more general acclaim from his fellow countrymen. East and West, North and South, our cities possess sterling examples of his work. Columbia, Yale, Dartmouth, and Harvard have set the seal of their approval upon him by honorary degrees. Among the artistic professions, the glad recognition of his powers was from the first a matter of course. Suffice it to mention here his membership in the National Academy of Design, the American Institute of Architects, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the National Sculpture Society. Of this last body, he was president for two terms, and from 1910 until his death (in 1931), honorary president. This society also chose him as the first recipient of its medal of honor, and he was among the first to receive the Architectural League's medal of honor in sculpture.

Although French's monument to Lincoln is certainly the greatest work for which he is known, it is only one work in a lifetime of sculpture. French was also the creator of memorials for Francis Parkman (Boston), Thomas Gallaudet (Washington, D.C.), and Ralph Waldo Emerson (Concord, Massachusetts), among many others. French's statue of the Minute Man (below) stands on the site of the Old North Bridge at Concord—with Lexington, the location of the first battle with the British in the American Revolution.

The Lincoln Memorial, photo by Warren Perry.

Minute Man statue -- man standing with rifle and chisel plow — *The Minute Man*, by Daniel Chester French, in Concord, Massachusetts. Photograph by Warren Perry

Cited:
Adeline Adams, Daniel Chester French: Sculptor (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1932).