Boston Athenæum

November 10, 2016 at the Boston Athenæum. During this lecture, David Dearinger, the Athenæum’s Director of Exhibitions and Susan Morse Hilles Senior Curator of Paintings & Sculpture, will speak about Daniel Chester French’s representation of the female figure. Daniel Chester French (1850-1931) was America’s foremost sculptor of public monuments from the late 1870s to the late 1920s. His masterpieces adorn civic spaces, university campuses, and urban landmarks across the United States. Many of French’s public works commemorate historical figures, such as his life-size bronze sculpture The Minute Man (1875) at Concord, MA, or the colossal marble Abraham Lincoln (1922), displayed at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. His renown for these male-oriented masterpieces is merited, but French was equally proficient at modeling the female figure. Feminine beauty in its idealized form was often at the forefront of French’s work. French’s allegorical representation of the female form seeks to fulfill a sensual, tac