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Jennie Delano

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Jennie Delano

1898
bronze
24 1/4 in. x 18 1/2 in. x 1 1/4 in. (61.6 cm x 46.99 cm x 3.18 cm)
Anonymous Gift, 1972.27

Daniel Chester French
American
1850–1931

Although Daniel Chester French made his reputation with his public sculpture, he was also adept at intimate portraiture-busts and reliefs. His bust of Ralph Waldo Emerson was an early success and one that was replicated in editions.

The Currier's portrait of Jennie Delano is French's fourteenth relief and was completed during his summer at "Chesterwood," the artist's summer home and studio at Glendale outside Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Jennie (Jean Walters) Delano (1889-1953), the fifth of seven children of Jennie Walters and Warren Delano III of East Orange, New Jersey, was depicted by French at the age of eight. Jennie Walters, the sitter's mother, was the granddaughter of Henry Walters, the founder of the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, Maryland. The sitter, Jennie, later married George H. Edgell, former director of Fine Arts and dean of the Architectural School, Harvard University, and director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

The Henry-Bonnard bronze foundry cast the relief. At the time, it was considered the best sand-cast bronze works in the United States. This was the foundry that French chose for casting his monuments as well. There is another bronze in a private collection, (descended through the Lyman [brother of Jean] Delano family), Saint Paul, Minnesota, and a plaster at "Chesterwood."

French's career spanned six decades during which time he executed nearly one hundred portrait statues, allegorical memorials, and architectural sculptures. His allegorical sculptures include the O'Reilly Memorial (1896 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), the Spencer Trask Memorial (1915, Saratoga Springs, NY), and the First Division Memorial (1924, Washington, DC). His portrait monuments include the Ulysses S. Grant (1899, Fairmount Park, Philadelphia), the Abraham Lincoln (1912, Lincoln, NE) and the most memorable of all, the Seated Lincoln (1922, Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC).

French was a founder and officer of the National Sculpture Society and president of the National Commission of Fine Arts from 1912 to 1915. He collaborated with the leading architects of his time: Henry Bacon, Cass Gilbert, Thomas Hastings, and Charles McKim. As trustee and chairman of the Sculpture Committee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, from 1904 on he was responsible for the collection and acquisition of a most significant group of American contemporary sculpture.

JHD

REFERENCES


Beatrice G. Proske. Brookgreen Gardens Sculpture. Murrells Inlet, SC: Brookgreen Gardens, 1943.

Margaret French Cresson. Daniel Chester French: American Sculptors Series 4. New York: W.W. Norton for the National Sculpture Society, 1947.

Michael Richman. "Daniel Chester French" in Jeanne Wasserman, ed., Metamorphoses in Nineteenth-Century Sculpture. Cambridge, MA: Fogg Art Museum of Harvard University, 1975, pp. 219-58,

Michael Richman. Daniel Chester French: An American Sculptor (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, 1976.


Exhibition
1978 Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, NH, "Sculpture in the Realist Manner." Jan. 14 - Feb. 19.

1993 Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, NH, "Celebrate America! Three Centuries of American Art from the Currier." June 19 - Aug. 29.

1995-1997 "American Art from the Currier Gallery of Art." Organized by the Currier Gallery of Art and the American Federation of Arts. Traveled to: Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, FL, Dec. 3, 1995 - Jan. 28, 1996; Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, FL, Mar. 15 - Apr. 7, 1996; Art Museum of Western Virginia, Roanoke, VA, Aug. 10 - Oct. 13, 1996; The Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis, TN, Feb. 2 - Mar. 30, 1997; Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA, Apr. 25 - June 22, 1997; Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, NH, July 18 - Sept. 8, 1997, cat. no. 32.

2018 "The Cornish Colony" Currier Museum of Art, Feb. 10 - May 20.

Provenance
Private Collection
Gift to Currier Museum of Art, 1972


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