"A portrait is a picture in which there is just a tiny little something not quite right about the mouth." -- John Singer Sargent

Monday, May 9, 2016

John Quincy Adams Ward



This 1911 cast of a pre-1901 statue of John Quincy Adams Ward (1830-1910) by Charles Henry Niehaus sits in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC.
"John Quincy Adams Ward was the first distinctly American sculptor. His work resonates with the spirit of the age, rejecting Victorian sentimentality in favor of a hard-edged realism in representing forthrightly masculine figures. Even his allegorical subjects were remarkably realistic. For instance, Ward created Indian Hunter (1868), his first commission for Central Park, only after making an extensive study of Indians of the Northwest. His style appealed to the thrusting self-image of America's business and political leaders, as well as a public confident that America was emerging as an industrial and political power in the world." -- National Portrait Gallery
 

 John Quincy Adams Ward an Appreciation,  Adeline Adams' 1912 book includes this picture of The Indian Hunter in Central Park, New York.


and these two examples of Ward's work in Washington DC.

 General Thomas, in Thomas Circle



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