Existing comment:
Concord Minute Man of 1775:
by Daniel Chester French, 1888, cast 1917:
French modeled this statuette after his full-size "Minute Man," dedicated in 1875 in Concord, Massachusetts. The original statue was cast in bronze melted down from Civil War cannons and memorialized Captain Isaac Davis, the first officer killed in the historic battle at North Bridge. French borrowed the noble pose from a classical sculpture but clothed his figure in homespun. The humble and resolute farmer strides towards the enemy, his musket at the ready, leaving behind a plow that represents the land he fights for.
Artists and writers in the 1870s and 1880s worked to heal the ravages of the Civil War by creating mythic images of the nation's founding. The minute man, the Pilgrim, and the Puritan were the most powerful and comforting symbols of an earlier era when America was united. The plow standing at the ready evokes a peaceful future, and the passage from Isaiah promises "they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." |