Alexander Stirling Calder

Alexander Stirling Calder (January 11, 1870 – January 7, 1945) was an American sculptor and art teacher. He won a silver medal at the World's Fair of 1904 for his statue of Philip François Renault and led the sculpture program for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition after the death of Karl Bitter. His notable works include the Samuel Gross statue, George Washington on the Washington Square Arch in New York City, the Swann Memorial Fountain in Philadelphia, the Depew Memorial Fountain in Indianapolis, and the Leif Erikson Memorial in Reykjavík, Iceland.

He taught sculpture at the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art, the Throop Polytechnic Institute, and the National Academy of Design. His father, Alexander Milne Calder, and son Alexander Calder were also sculptors.

Early life and education

Calder was born on January 11, 1870, in Philadelphia, the oldest of six boys, to sculptor Alexander Milne Calder and Margaret Stirling. He attended city public schools and enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) in Fall 1885, at age 15. He studied under Thomas Eakins for several months, until the teacher's forced resignation in February 1886. Calder remained at PAFA, studying under Thomas Anshutz and James P. Kelly. Two of his sculptures were accepted for PAFA's 1887 annual exhibition, a rare honor for a student. He worked from 1889 to 1890 as a demonstrator of anatomy at the academy and graduated in 1890.

His father designed and was then in the midst of executing, the extensive sculpture program for Philadelphia City Hall. Calder worked as an apprentice on the project during the summers, and is reported to have modeled an arm for one of the figures. He made his first trip to Europe in Summer 1889, and returned there to study the following year.

Calder moved to Paris with Charles Grafly in Fall 1890, and studied at the Académie Julian under Henri Michel Chapu. The following year, he was accepted at the École des Beaux-Arts, where he entered the atelier of Alexandre Falguière.

Career

In 1892, he returned to Philadelphia and began his career as a sculptor in earnest. His first major commission, won in a national competition, was for the Samuel Gross statue for the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Another early commission was for a set of twelve statues of Presbyterian clergymen for the facade of the Witherspoon Building in Philadelphia.

He worked as an instructor in modeling at the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art from 1900 to 1906. In 1904, he won a silver medal at the World's Fair of 1904 in St. Louis, Missouri, for his statue of Philip François Renault.

He suffered from tuberculosis and moved to Arizona in 1906 to recover his health. After his health recovered, he moved to Pasadena, California, and his family joined him. In Pasadena, he modeled architectural sculpture for the Throop Polytechnic Institute (now the California Institute of Technology). He returned to the east coast in 1910 and settled in Croton-on-Hudson, New York. He taught at the National Academy of Design from 1910 to 1917 and was elected an academician in 1913.

He was placed in charge of the sculpture program for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, California, after the death of Karl Bitter. He obtained a studio in New York City and employed the services of model Audrey Munson who posed for him as the model for the Star Maiden statue. For the exposition, Calder completed three massive sculpture groups, The Nations of the East and The Nations of the West, which crowned triumphal arches, and a fountain group, The Fountain of Energy. Following Bitter's sudden death in April 1915, Calder completed the Depew Memorial Fountain in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Hermon Atkins MacNeil and Calder were commissioned to create sculptures for the Washington Square Arch in New York City. George Washington as Commander-in-Chief, Accompanied by Fame and Valor (1914–1916) was sculpted by MacNeil; and George Washington as President, Accompanied by Wisdom and Justice (1917–18) by Calder. These are sometimes referred to as Washington at War and Washington at Peace.

He sculpted a number of ornamental works for Villa Vizcaya, the James Deering estate outside Miami, Florida. These included the famous Italian Barge (1917–1919), a stone folly in the shape of a boat, projecting into Biscayne Bay.

He taught at the Art Students League of New York from 1918 to 1922.

Two of his major commissions of the 1920s were the Swann Memorial Fountain in Logan Circle, and the architectural sculpture program for the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

He was one of a dozen sculptors invited to compete in Oklahoma's Pioneer Woman statue competition in 1926–27, which was won by Bryant Baker. In 1927, he was also commissioned by the Berkshire Museum to sculpt the woodwork and fountain of the museum's Ellen Crane Memorial Room in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

In 1929, he won the national competition for a monumental statue of Leif Eriksson, to be the gift of the United States to Iceland in commemoration of the 1000th anniversary of the Icelandic Parliament.

Personal life

Calder married portrait painter Nanette Lederer on February 22, 1895, and they lived in Philadelphia for the first decade of their marriage. They had two children: Margaret Calder Hayes and Alexander Calder.

Calder died on January 7, 1945, and was interred at West Laurel Hill Cemetery in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania.

Legacy

Works from Alexander Stirling Calder will be displayed at a new museum under construction for his son's work in Philadelphia.

Selected works

Architectural sculpture

• Twelve cast stone figures of Presbyterian clergymen, Witherspoon Building, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1898–99, Joseph Miller Huston, architect. Six of the figures were removed in 1961, and relocated to the garden of the Presbyterian Historical Society.

• Reverend Marcus Whitman
• Reverend James Caldwell
• Reverend Samuel Davies
• Reverend John McMillan
• Reverend John Witherspoon
• Reverend Francis Makemie

• Six spandrel figures, cast concrete, Throop Polytechnic Institute (now California Institute of Technology), Pasadena, California, 1906–1909, Myron Hart & Elmer Grey, architects. Nature and Art, Energy and Law, Science and Imagination
• Oakland Civic Auditorium, Oakland, California, 1914, John J. Donovan, architect. The Riches of the Earth – Seven terra cotta, half-domed friezes within the arched entrances.Category:Riches of the Earth (1915) by Alexander Stirling Calder – Wikimedia Commons
• Missouri State Capitol, Jefferson City, Missouri, 1924, Tracy and Swartwout, architects. South Frieze, limestone, 6ft (1.8m) x 138ft (42m), depicts Missouri history in 13 bas relief panels. The frieze flanks the tops of the central portico's columns and continues behind them. North Frieze, limestone, bas relief panels depict Native Americans and Europeans. The frieze flanks the tops of the central columns and continues inside the curved portico.

• Throop Polytechnic Institute, c.1910.
• Oakland Civic Auditorium, c.1917
• Half-domed frieze
• Missouri State Capitol, south façade.
• Missouri State Capitol, north facade.

• Four figures of famous actresses, marble, I. Miller Building, Broadway and West 46th Street, Manhattan, New York City, 1927–1929:

• I. Miller Building facade
• Ethel Barrymore as Ophelia
• Rosa Ponselle as Norma
• Marilyn Miller as Sunny
• Mary Pickford as Little Lord Fauntleroy

• Sculpture program for University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, completed 1931, Wilson Eyre, Frank Miles Day, and Cope & Stewardson, architects: Lion's Head Fountain (1920s). Peacock doorway (1920s). Youth doorway (1920s). Gateposts (1920s): Asia, Africa, Europe, America

Medallions

• Life as a Dance (c.1938), Metropolitan Museum of Art, Manhattan, New York City

Citations

Sources

• Armstrong, Tom (1976). . Whitney Museum of Art. ISBN0-87923-185-8.
• Fairmount Park Art Association, Sculpture of a City: Philadelphia's Treasures in Bronze and Stone, Walker Publishing Co., Inc, New York. NY 1974
• Falk, Peter Hastings, ed., Who was Who in American Art, Sound View Press, Madison Connecticut, 1985
• Gadzinski, Cunningham, Panhorst et al., American Sculpture in the Museum of American Art of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Museum of American Art of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1997
• Hoeber, Arthur (September 1910). . The World's Work: A History of Our Time. XX: 13377–13388.
• Opitz, Glenn B ed., Mantle Fielding's Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors & Engravers, Apollo Book, Poughkeepsie NY, 1986
• Perl, Jed (2017). . Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN9780307272720.
• Proske, Beatrice Gilman, Brookgreen Gardens Sculpture, Brookgreen Gardens, South Carolina, 1968

Further reading

• Bach, Penny Balkin, , Temple University Press, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1992
• Calder, A. Sterling, , Privately published, New York, 1947
• Craven, Wayne, , University of Delaware Press, 1984
• Hayes, Margaret Calder , Paul S Eriksson Publisher, Middlebury, Vermont, 1977 ISBN0-8397-8017-6

External links

• at theInternet Archive
• atFind a Grave