You might be surprised to learn that the famous statue of Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial was created from Georgia marble. Henry Bacon, an architect, was commissioned by Congress to design a memorial to Lincoln. Bacon was a friend and admirer of the work of Daniel Chester French (1850-1931), one of the handful of great American sculptors of the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries -the “Golden Age” of American sculpture. A few summers back, we were visiting family in Connecticut and drove north through Hartford into the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts to visit “Chesterwood” where French’s home and studio are maintained as a National Trust site.
We live near the Georgia Marble Quarry in Tate, Georgia and knew from locals that the Lincoln Memorial statue was carved of Georgia marble. “Chesterwood” is located in the beautiful Berkshires near Stockbridge, Massachusetts less than two hours’ drive north of Hartford, Connecticut.
French was only a boy when he became known as a sculptor. He won the commission to portray one of the minutemen, commemorating the Battle of Concord. It is instantly recognizable to most of us who have seen it in schoolbooks commemorating the “Shot Heard Round the World.” Locals attacked British troops out of Boston at the bridge in one of the best- known acts of defiance of British authority at the start of the American Revolution.
French’s Georgia connection is in his material and subject matter. When commissioned by Congress to design a memorial to Abraham Lincoln, architect Henry Bacon asked his friend French to create a sculpture of the seated Lincoln. That work came to occupy the Lincoln Memorial building in Washington, D.C. French ordered marble, thought to be the most durable of American marbles, from the enormous marble quarry in Tate, Georgia. You may recall that I live near Tate and often hear explosions at the Tate quarry at night when things are quiet and the leaves are off the trees in winter. The statue in the Lincoln memorial is nearly twenty feet high and is easily the most recognizable of American sculptures. It appears on the obverse of pennies. In a longer article to come, I will detail how the memorial came to be, how French came to be involved in the project and why its completion was delayed for years.
There are many local stories about the creation of the statue, one I have heard has a local person having sat in “Lincoln’s lap” while it was being carved locally. In fact, the stones were quarried and cut to French’s specifications and shipped by train to the studio of the Piccirilli sculpture studio in New York where the actual carving was done using a model created by French as a guide. The Piccirillis, father and four sons, were master carvers who had left the Carrera quarries in Italy to come to America. Creating a monumental sculpture is a special kind of art process that typically involves carving or casting using a smaller original as a model.
The Piccirilli studio was the most famous in America and the Piccirillis were sculptors themselves, as well as stone carvers. The easily recognized lions that sit at the entrance to the New York Public Library (“Patience” and “Fortitude”) were carved from stone in their studio. Many of the leading sculptors used their studio, which employed pneumatic tools driven by a 40 horse-power electric motor, making it the most up-to-date of U.S. carving studios in the early twentieth century.
I have not been able to determine if the other French sculpture connected with Georgia was carved in the Piccirilli studio, but perhaps someone reading this will have run across that piece of information and will share it. This statue is the bust of General James Oglethorpe in Oglethorpe Square in Savannah, which appears to be executed in Georgia pink marble.
Portrait sculpture like the two I have mentioned have fallen into disfavor or perhaps there is not the will to spend money on such things. They can also be controversial, as was the sculpture of soldiers for the Viet Nam War Memorial in Washington. And, the sculptural works memorializing the confederacy have become controversial. It is helpful to recall that for many Americans, the “Wall” on the Washington Mall (near the Lincoln Memorial) that bears the names of most Viet Nam soldiers killed there did not meet with universal acceptance when it was new, even though it seems that it does today. The nearby lifelike sculpture of the soldiers’ group was added to satisfy traditionalists, but also includes, appropriately, a woman. Those who sought it simply needed and wanted a human representation of those who had been killed in a foreign war.
I admit it. I am a traditionalist and I think it is less than ideal to memorialize our heroes by simply naming an overpass, a bridge or a highway intersection in their honor. Those things will be built with or without serving as memorials. Imagine Washington, D.C. without the statues of Jefferson, Lafayette and Washingon.. Or, Philadelphia without the statues of William Penn and Ben Franklin. Or, Boston, without the Robert Gould Shaw and 54th Regiment Memorial on the Commons. Or, suppose there were no statue of the Marines raising the flag on Mt. Suribachi during the battle for Iwo Jima located near the gate into Arlington National Cemetery.
I hope our newest national cemetery in nearby Canton, Georgia will eventually erect statuary that will evoke the humanity of those who lie there. And, would it not be appropriate and a source of pride if it were executed in Georgia marble? It would be of course, the same Georgia marble from which the headstones of so many veterans have been fashioned.
