Daniel Preston - Williamsburg, VA | The Papers of Daniel Chester French is a collection of historical documents illuminating the life and career of Daniel Chester French, the American sculptor who created two of the iconic images of the United States—the Minute Man statue in Concord, Massachusetts, and the state of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. C. The edition has been compiled and prepared for publication by Daniel Preston and Michael Richman. The volume totals 1,103 pages (721,269 words), comprising front matter, 1,260 documents, a descriptive list of 359 sculptural works, and indices. It is accompanied by 370 photographs of French’s sculptural work.
Daniel Chester French was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, on 20 April 1850. He sculpted his first figures in 1868, and pursued his craft until his death in October 1931. During that period French fashioned some 360 sculptural works—decorative pieces, memorial plaques, medals, simple tombstones, busts, statues, museum pieces, and public monuments. The letters and other papers presented here document this extraordinary career as well as French’s participation in the development of American art in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. They also give us a picture of his personal life and provide us with an understanding of his character.
The focus of any work on Daniel Chester French naturally lies upon his sculpture. The papers presented here provide a comprehensive and detailed overview of his work: the preliminary discussions that led to commissions and contracts; the creative process of conceiving, modelling, and casting or carving; and the public reception and approbation of French’s sculpture. French was extremely articulate, and his correspondence with patrons, fellow artists, architects, and friends give us an incomparable look at the creative process. His correspondence also reflects his views on the work of fellow artists and on trends in art, both two-dimensional and sculptural. Furthermore, French’s involvement with arts institutions, such as the National Sculptors’ Society, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Academy in Rome, and the Commission of Fine Arts provides insights into evolution of art in the United States.
The line between the professional and the personal is often thin, and French’s correspondence with friends such as sculptors Evelyn Longman and Augustus Saint-Gaudens, painters Albert Thayer and Edwin Blashfield, architects Charles McKim and Henry Bacon, and patrons Katrina Trask, Harriet Bradbury and George R. White illustrates this. The greatest example, however, is the correspondence with his brother, William M. R. French, who served for thirty-two years as the director of the Art Institute of Chicago. Indeed, all his correspondence with family members—his father Henry Flagg French, step-mother Pamela French, and sisters Harriette Hollis and Sally Bartlett—and with his friends as well, ranges freely between his artistic work and personal affairs. (It should be noted here that only a handful of letters between French and his wife Mary survive. Margaret French Cresson recorded that her father burned their correspondence.)
An unexpected joy is the letters written by French during his teens and twenties, which began when he was fifteen and writing to his life-long friend, the renowned ornithologist William Brewster. French and Brewster shared an interest in birds and a deep love of nature, and these letters illustrate the bonds of their friendship from when they first met in 1861 until Brewster’s death in 1919. Other letters, written mostly to his brother Will and to his father, present a richly detailed picture of the social life of young adults in Concord, Massachusetts, in Washington, D. C., and for the two years that he resided there in the mid-1870s, in the American community in Florence, Italy. French naturally had extensive connections in the art community, but he also had friends in the world of literature, music, and theater. Chief of among these was Ralph Waldo Emerson, a Concord neighbor who French portrayed in a bust and a statue and who was largely responsible for the twenty-three-year-old French receiving the commission for the Minute Man statue. French was also friendly with the Alcotts—he crafted a bust of Bronson Alcott, and May Alcott encouraged the young French to pursue a career in sculpture. Other prominent correspondents included Emily Dickinson (a neighbor of the French family when they resided in Amherst), Edith Wharton (who had a residence in the Berkshires not far the French summer home), Henry James, Robert Frost, and composer George W. Chadwick, whose composition “The Angel of Death” was inspired by French’s memorial to Martin Milmore.
French was frequently asked to speak in public, but he always declined, claiming the he was a very poor public speaker. He had no such hesitation, however, about writing essays for publication. His earliest efforts were newspaper essays written during his residence in Italy in the 1870s. Later writings included introductions to books on his friends May Alcott and William Brewster and and essay bearing the title “On Certain Obstacles to the Highest Enjoyment of Music From A Sculptor, With Practical Suggestions.”
Both Dan and Will French occasionally decorated their letters with sketches. The pages bearing these drawings have been scanned, and the digital images have been inserted as illustrations with these letters.
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