Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865 President of the United States
Donated by Roland F. Knoedler to the Musée de Versailles in 1920.
Loaned to the Musée franco-américain du château de Blérancourt in 1930.
Leonard Wells Volk was thirty-eight years old when he created this bronze bust of Abraham Lincoln, one of the more than 1,700 works by United States artists added to French national collections between 1620 and 1940.
You can find them all catalogued in La Fayette's Database of American Art accessible on The Louvre's website (see right-hand column). It's a bilingual on-line source that includes pieces in all media except prints and photography.
The Lincoln bust is of special interest because it is one of a number created by Volk following a sitting by the president in the spring of 1860. During a visit by Abraham Lincoln to Chicago, Volk asked him to sit for a bust.
"ANYTHING BUT AGREEABLE"
When Lincoln agreed, the artist decided to start by doing a life mask - which involved the president enduring the discomfort of wet plaster drying on his face, followed by a skin-stretching removal process. He reportedly described it as "anything but agreeable" but accepted it with good humour.
On seeing the final bust, he was quite pleased, declaring it "the animal himself."
Volk later used the life mask and bust of 1860 as the basis for other editions, including a full-length statue of Lincoln.
Leonard Wells Volk (1828 - 1895) was born at Wellstown (now Wells), Hamilton County, New York. He first followed the trade of a marble cutter with his father at Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
In 1848. he opened a studio at St Louis, Missouri, and in 1855 was sent by his wife's cousin, politician Stephen A. Douglas, to Rome to study.
Returning to America in 1857, he settled in Chicago, where he helped to establish an Academy of Design and served for eight years as its principal.
MONUMENTS TO AN OUTSTANDING CAREER.
Among his principal works are the colossal Douglas monument in Chicago, Illinois; the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument in Rochester, New York; statues of Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas in the Illinois State Capitol at Springfield, Illinois; a statue of General James Shields in Statuary Hall, United States Capitol; and statues of Elihu B. Washburne, Zachariah Chandler and David Davis.
The Stephen A. Douglas Memorial.Volk's more formal bust of Lincoln can be found at the El Paso Museum of Art.
The sculptor's son, Douglas Volk (1856-1935), followed in his father's footsteps, becoming a prominent painter, who studied under J. L. Gerome in Paris, and became a member of the Society of American Artists in 1880 and of the National Academy of Design in 1899.
No comments:
Post a Comment