Existing comment:
They replaced this sign since I complained about an error on it.
James Earle Fraser
American, 1876-1953
Theodore Roosevelt, 1920
Born in Minnesota and raised in South Dakota, Fraser is best known for the monuments to Native Americans. He began his artistic career, however, producing architectural sculptures for Chicago's 1893 World Columbian Exposition, soon after which he sought academic training in France. While there he became an assistant to Augustus Saint-Gaudens, the leading American sculptor working in Paris at the time.
This image of Theodore Roosevelt, paired with one of his well-known sayings, strongly evokes Saint-Gaudens's celebrated approach to bas-relief portraiture. Fraser likely met America's twenty-sixth president through his teacher, who was then designing the famed twenty-dollar "double eagle" gold coin, issued in 1907. Six years later, Fraser himself developed a reputation as a numismatist, producing the so-called Indian head, or buffalo, nickel. |