Daniel Chester French

Daniel Chester French 1850-1931, American sculptor, b. Exeter, N.H., studied in Florence and in Boston with William Rimmer. After executing his first large work, The Minute Man (1875), he received many important commissions, including his most famous achievement, the heroic Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C. His style varies from a detailed realistic rendering, especially in portraiture, to a grand ideal in his allegorical works. Some of the best of his statues and memorials are John Harvard and the bust of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Harvard); Death and the Young Sculptor, Milmore Memorial (Boston); Mourning Victory, Melvin Memorial (Concord, Mass.); Lewis Cass (Capitol, Washington, D.C.); and Alma Mater (Columbia Univ.). In collaboration with Edward C. Potter he executed equestrian statues of General Grant (Philadelphia), General Washington (Paris), and General Joseph Hooker (Boston).

Bibliography: See biography by his daughter, M. F. Cresson (1947).

French, Daniel Chester (1850–1931). American sculptor. He made his name with the famous bronze statue of the Minute Man (1875), in Concord, Massachusets, a monument to commemorate the rising of the citizens of the town during the early years of the Revolution (the figure was ready to fight for his country in a minute). After this success, French went on to become the most illustrious sculptor of public monuments of his day, his best-known work being the huge seated marble figure of Abraham Lincoln (dedicated in 1922) on the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.