Meet Daniel Chester French, the New Englander behind America’s greatest monuments

Mention the name Daniel Chester French and the answer is usually a blank look. Follow that with, “Ya know, the guy who created the Lincoln statue at the Lincoln Memorial.” Oh yeah, OK, that guy! Huh!

Yes, that guy! The guy who is among America’s greatest sculptors, if not its greatest.

Set inside architect Henry Bacon's Greek Revival exterior, a gracious and godly frame for French’s towering seated Lincoln, the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., is now 101 years old, and is among the greatest of public statues and monuments and a landmark known the world over.

Yet, the name and story of its New England-born creator goes largely unrecognized. Close study of his life and work is available at French’s summer home, Chesterwood, and still intact studio in Massachusetts’ beautiful Berkshire Hills, and also at the museum in the handsome Colonial town of Concord.

Patriotic origins

French was born in 1850 in Exeter, New Hampshire, but grew up in Concord. The progressive well-to-do town’s established artistic community numbered writers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne and, most notably, Louisa May Alcott. French took some lessons in modeling clay with Louisa’s sister, the almost as famous artist Abigail May Alcott Nieriker, generally referred to as May, and it is thought May encouraged French to bid for the town’s commemorative sculpture marking the centennial of the April 1775 Battle of Concord.

French won the bid and, still in his early 20s, embarked on his first large-scale commission, creating the Minute Man, which depicts a young farmhand nobly bearing arms, and marks the spot where a skirmish between British troops and Colonial militia sparked the first battle of what erupted into the Revolutionary War.

The statue still stands at the edge of Concord’s town center, on what is now the Minute Man Trail.

From figurines to monuments

That commission, along with that for a bust of Emerson, to whom French was related — something that didn’t hurt his career at all — put French on the map as a sculptor of monumental men and of monuments.

But he started small. At the Concord Museum, of which French was a founding member, his early work as a commercial artist can be seen among the museum’s considerable display honoring French. Alongside a Minute Man model and other artifacts pertaining to its creation is a display of French’s small, beautifully carved Parian porcelain animal figurines, which are among his early commercial endeavors as a sculptor.  The figurines were sold as home decorations, but French was said to grumble about the meagre earnings those gave him.

The museum also has a 3-foot bronze copy of the seated Lincoln, which was a private commission after the Lincoln Memorial dedication on Memorial Day 1922. Apparently, those who could afford one wanted a copy of the seated Lincoln in their homes. French obliged, more evidence he was both an artist and also a good businessman.

Though French had trained in anatomy and drawing in Boston and already had the Minute Man under his belt, he headed to Florence to finish or fine-tune his studies. Eventually, French based himself in Manhattan, becoming exceptionally successful as a monumentalist — by his death in 1931 he created 92 public works. Never mind other private commissions and the carvings he did for his own pleasure.

Notably, French carved the John Harvard statue at Harvard University, from his own imagining — no visuals of the university founder were to be had for him to work from. In Concord’s Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, where French is buried, he created the Art Deco-styled Melvin Memorial honoring the three Melvin brothers who died in the Civil War. It is also called Mourning Victory, and French made a copy for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Mourning Victory, like most of French’s work, has an emotional quality that simply stops you and holds you. That’s not something easily taught.

A respite from his labors

As was popular in the Gilded Age of the late 1800s, French bought land in the quiet Western Massachusetts town of Stockbridge in the Berkshires. With his good friend Henry Bacon as architect, French’s studio was built before the home, in 1897. While Bacon then set about designing a home for the family, French, his wife, Mary, and daughter, Margaret, lived in the property’s original cottage.

By 1901, Bacon completed the handsome but not lavish European-styled home French called Chesterwood, and the family split the year between Manhattan and Stockbridge. Though French was always working, in the Berkshires he could unwind more and even work on his garden, which he designed, as respite from his labors.

It’s fair to say French was never the struggling artist: He grew up in comfort and some might say privilege, and he valued living a good though not ostentatious life with his family. The very social Frenchs entertained in both homes — Bacon was a frequent guest at Chesterwood, and novelists Henry James and Edith Wharton (the Whartons were neighbors) — were among many who visited.

But although French grew up in a upper-middle-class family and surely never went without, he had a tremendous work ethic, often having two commissions on the go at once and rarely taking a day off. Which is why the studio was built before the home! Everything about the beautiful studio served the artist and his work, including the unparalleled views of the French-designed Italianate formal gardens and those of the magnificent Berkshires on the other side of the studio.

Inside, enormous northern facing windows offered the most favorable light, and the interior was purposefully built to 26 feet high and with big double doors to accommodate large-scale commissions. The open-plan design included a nook where French’s daybed allowed him to rest without moving far from his work.

There’s also a scullery, which still bears French’s tools, including those given him by May Alcott. But it is the many, many great sculptures on display that captivate, including one of daughter Margaret as his model. Margaret became a notable sculptor, too.

Sculpting Lincoln

One of the first works French began at Chesterwood was a major commission for the George Washington equestrian statue to stand on Paris' Place d’Iéna near the Jardins du Trocadéro. While French set about envisioning the mighty Washington, he left the noble horse to Edward C. Potter, his former student. It is said French didn’t consider himself good at horses … or perhaps he was engrossed in the human form at which he truly excelled. Or maybe he was just so busy!

Amongst all the molds and models though, two are easily recognized: a miniature 10-inch-tall Lincoln cast, positioned next to the final 6-foot-high model completed in 1916, shows how the work developed. For one thing, at first the president’s face was more downcast. Even hopeless. His hands and legs are in a different position too. It was far too maudlin a stance for a man of such fame and power. The signifiers needed editing.

French had the many photographs of Lincoln to work from (the 16th president and commander-in-chief was the most photographed person of his day). And, strange as it seems, Chicago artist Leonard Volk was commissioned to make plaster casts of Lincoln’s face and hands in 1860, five years before his assassination, and these were available commercially.

However, Volk’s casts had both hands clenched and the seated Lincoln has one clenched and one open. French decided to carve one of president's hands clenched, representing his strength, and the other hand is open, slightly more relaxed, showing Lincoln’s open heart. Scholars think French used his own hands as reference for the demeanor and positioning of Lincoln’s hands.

To further the uplifting theme, the final model shows French raised Lincoln’s chin — but without changing the gravity in his weary-looking face.

With the final mold ready, French then handed off to his go-to master Italian carvers, the Piccirilli Brothers, based in the Bronx, New York, who had the task of transferring French’s 6-foot plaster model to the 28 blocks of Georgia marble that make up the sculpture.

That it is French’s most famous work is a given: The resulting 19-foot-high figure, which sits on an 11-foot pedestal, took over five years from when French was awarded the contract in December 1914 to installation in 1920.

'A transcendent piece of American art'

In it, French created a transcendent piece of American art, as recognized the world over as Michelangelo’s David, if not more so. As an adjunct to the studio and the French home, a museum and gallery tucked into the grounds at Chesterwood further tells French’s story and that of his art. In truth, French never talked about his work. He thought it should speak for itself and that is resoundingly true of the seated Lincoln. Even if those hands belong to that of the sculptor, French did his job as an artist, rightly glorifying Lincoln, not himself. Thus French’s name is an afterthought, if one at all.

As undoubtedly honored as French may have been to carve the Lincoln, it is said it was not his favorite among his own works. That was still to come.

In the summer of 1929, French at 79 began working on a sculpture purely for his own pleasure, not for a commission. He carved a supine almost 6-foot-high Andromeda, who, although chained to a rock awaiting a grisly fate, has a demeanor of hope and thus empowerment, not that of cowed victim.

The stunning Andromeda is said to be French's favorite and she never left his studio.

Chesterwood is open to the public for tours late spring through late fall at 4 Williamsville Road, Stockbridge. chesterwood.org. The Concord Museum is open Tues.-Sun., 10 a.m.-4 p.m. at 53 Cambridge Turnpike, Concord. concordmuseum.org

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Lincoln Memorial sculptor's Berkshires home a touchstone to history