Chesterwood

Last Monday I toured the Massachusetts studio of the sculptor Daniel Chester French. He designed the Lincoln memorial. There are quite a few pictures of the memorial on Twitter today. The pictures are taken from behind temporary fencing erected for tonights' Salute To America.

The memorial was intended to show the difficulty of Lincoln as the decision maker during the Civil War. Lincoln knew his actions would lead to many deaths. French's monument is a powerful representation of the necessity and undesirability of war. Even if you have seen the actual memorial it is enlightening to see the earlier, smaller versions, that the artist used to work out the design.

The actual sculpture was carved right here in the Bronx in 1922 by the Piccirilli brothers. They were Italian immigrants. An article by Lucie Levine points out "The brothers faced anti-immigrant sentiment even as they worked to realize some of the United States’ most patriotic sculptures.... The Lincoln Memorial Commission rejected French’s suggestion to have “Piccirilli” inscribed on the pedestal of the Lincoln Memorial."