Q. David Bowers
BARTLETI, Paul Wayland
Born in New Haven, Connecticut on January 24, 1865, the son of famous sculptor Truman H. Bartlett and Mary Ann (White) Bartlett, Paul Wayland Bartlett followed a career in art and sculpture. At the age of nine Bartlett went to Paris with his mother, where when he was 14 years old he exhibited a bust of his mother at the Paris Salon. When he was 15 he studied sculpture under Jules Pierre Cavelier at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. Around the same time he was a pupil of Emmanuel Premier in animal sculpture studies at the Jardin des Plantes. At one time he also worked under Auguste Rodin and Gardet.
He exhibited his sculpture, Bear Tamer (also known as The Bohemian), at the Paris Salon in 1887; later the bronze went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. His 1889 statue, Ghost Dancer (a Sioux warrior engaged in a tribal rite), was a popular attraction at the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. The Genius of Man group was part of a fountain at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo. Bartlett's work was also featured in other European and American expositions and in museums. In the 1890s he made many small bronze figures of reptiles, fish, and other animals using the "eire perdue" or lost wax process. With shimmering gem-like surfaces, these works attracted a wide audience.
Bartlett's pediment for the House of Representatives is one of his most famous works and consisted of two allegorical groups, Agriculture and Fine Arts, illustrating the riches of our republican society. For the rotunda of the Library of Congress he created large bronze statues of Columbus and Michelangelo and the allegorical figure, Law; and for the New York Public Library he sculpted six figures in marble, representing Philosophy, Religion, History, Drama, Poetry, and Romance.
Although Bartlett maintained studios in Washington, D.C. and in Paris and made many sculptures for public display in America, his heart was in Paris, and he spent as much time as possible there. His Paris studio, the same facility earlier used by Bartholdi to create the Statue of Liberty, was purchased from the government of France.
In Paris, beginning in 1899, he created several versions of a equestrian statue of Lafayette, one of which served as a motif for the 1900 Lafayette commemorative silver dollar. That statue was erected in the court of the Louvre in Paris in 1900 and became his best known work. Dissatisfied with details of the Lafayette statue, Bartlett recast the work with a differently modeled horse and with different clothing and details to the figure of Marquis de Lafayette. The new version, significantly different from that shown on the commemorative dollar, was set in place in 1908.
The artist was married twice, both times to American women of prominence in society. His second marriage occurred in 1913 and was to Suzanne F. (Earle) Simmons, widow of a famous geologist. He had no children. Bartlett died on September 20, 1925, in Paris.
Commemorative credit: 1900 Lafayette silver dollar (while Bartlett did not work on the design of this coin, his equestrian statue of Lafayette was used by Charles E. Barber as the motif for the reverse).
BARTHOLDI, Frederic Auguste
Frederic Auguste Bartholdi was born in Colmar, Haut-Rhin, in northeastern France, on April 2, 1834. Trained as a sculptor, he produced many works, the two best known of which are Le Lion de Belfort (commemorating the defense of Belfort against Germans in the 1871 Franco-Prussian War) and Liberte Eclairant le Monde (Liberty Enlightening the World), better known as the Statue of Liberty, now a national monument (details concerning the statue are given under the entry for the 1986 Statue of Liberty half dollar in the present text). Bartholdi died in Paris on October 4, 1904.
Commemorative credits: Although Bartholdi was not directly involved with any United States commemorative coins, the Statue of Liberty and/or its details were part of the motifs for the 1986 Statue of Liberty half dollar (obverse), silver dollar (obverse and reverse), and $5 gold (obverse).
BATES, Emily
Emily Bates was an Arkansas sculptress, according to news items published in the 1930s. During the preparation of models for the Arkansas half dollar in 1935, she worked in the Chicago studio of famed sculptor Lorado Taft.
Commemorative credits: 1935-1939 Arkansas Centennial half dollar (prepared models from designs by Edward Everett Burr), 1936 Robinson-Arkansas half dollar (reverse, or eagle side).
BEACH, Chester
Born in San Francisco, May23, 1881, the son of Chilion and Elizabeth (Ferris) Beach, Chester Beach attended the Mark Hopkins Institute in that city and the Lock Polytechnic School, also in San Francisco, 1895-1899. From 1900 until 1903 he was a designer of jewelry and precious metal goods for Shreve & Co., local jewelers. In 1903 he went to Paris, remaining there until 1906 and studying under Verlet and Roland at the Academie Julian, earning a gold medal there in 1905. In the latter year he moved to New York City, where he established a studio maintained until 1951, with the exception of a brief period 1910-1912 when he worked in Rome.
Three groups of his sculptures were shown at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, Primitive, Medieval, and Modern Progress. Beach created life-sized marbles for the California Palace of Legion of Honor, San Francisco. Over a period of time Beach became one of the most famous figures in American sculptural art. In addition to dozens of large sculptures, he created much in the fields of portraiture and medallic art, winning the American Numismatic Society's coveted Saltus Award in 1946 for excellence in the latter field.
On August 11, 1910, Chester Beach married Eleanor Murdock in a ceremony performed in Scarsdale, New York. The union produced three daughters: Beata (who married Vernon Carroll Porter), Eleanor (who married Paul Fitchen), and Nathalie (who married John Ellis McLaurey). Chester Beach died in Brewster, New York, August 6, 1956.
Commemorative credits: 1923-S Monroe Doctrine Centennial half dollar, 1925 Lexington-Concord Sesquicentennial half dollar (the obverse of which was inspired by Daniel Chester French's Minute Man statue), 1928 Hawaiian Sesquicentennial half dollar (he revised the designs done by Juliette May Fraser), 1935 Hudson Sesquicentennial half dollar.