International studio (40.1910)

The Work of J. O. A. Ward

SCULPTURAL DECORATION BY. J. Q A. WARD

NEW STOCK EXCHANGE PEDIMENT

was Mr. Ward's first commission, and from that
date he was never without one.

The statue stands in Newport, R. I., a heroic
bronze figure on a circular pedestal bearing reliefs,
and was unveiled October 2, 1868. Two years
earlier he had been at work on the group of the
Good Samaritan, cut in granite (very faithfully and
almost reverently cut, as he used to recall, by an
old man named Barry), erected in the Public Gar-
dens, Boston, to commemorate the discovery of the
use of ether as an anesthetic. In this group a
turbaned and bearded figure supports on his knee
the relaxed nude body of the "certain man," and
stanches the flow of blood from the wound in his
chest. The p*destal was by Ware and Van
Brunt, architects, both of them distinguished. The
Freedman, which shares with the Indian Hunter
the honor of being an opening by American sculp-
ture of new fields, dates from about 1865, and both
these works appeared at the Paris Exposition Uni-
vcrselle of 1867. But few productions of contem-
porary art have been received as so fully expressing
the fervor of a great national movement as the
Freedman, though it was never executed larger than
a statuette. "We have seen nothing in our sculp-
ture more soul-lifting or more comprehensively
eloquent," said Jarves in his "Art Idea."

One of the pleasantest memories in the sculptor's
long and busy life was that of the ceremony of the
unveiling of the Shakespeare on the Mall in Central
Park on the morning of May 23, 1872 (although the
date of the signature is 1870, and the inscription on
the pedestal reads: "Erected by the citizens of
New York, April 23, 1864, the 300th anniversary
of the birth of Shakespeare"). The pedestal had
been designed by Wrey Mould, architect, to whom
we are indebted for many of the most picturesque

of the little bridges in the park, and who, a musician
himself, had planned all the features of the cere-
mony, including an orchestra entirely of stringed
instruments. The spectators were ranged in a
wide semicircle; there were the white dresses and
the flowers; the weather was perfect; Edwin
Booth read a poem by R. H. Stoddard. This was
one of the rare occasions on which the artist finds
his perfect reward.

Another of his Central Park statues is that of
the Soldier oj the Seventh Regiment on Guard,
signed " 1869," erected by the regiment ("MDCCC-
LXXIII," on the pedestal) in honor of those of its
members, fifty-eight in number, who gave their
lives in defense of the Union, and still another is the
Pilgrim, unveiled June 6, 1885, erected by the New
England Society in the city of New York. In
this it was intended to draw clearly the distinction
between the Pilgrim and the Puritan forefather—
there was to be no personification of righteous in-
tolerance, no Cotton Mather, no Deacon Chapin.
At Herald Square is the statue of William E.
Dodge, erected by voluntary subscription under the
auspices of the Chamber of Commerce of the State
of New York; in front of the Tribune Building, in
Printing House Square, the seated figure of Horace
Greeley (1890), one of the sculptor's greatest
triumphs in the rendering and translating of an
apparently impossible sculpturesque theme. This
was a commission from the Tribune Association
and Mr. Whitelaw Reid. The stately and hand-
some Washington on the steps of the Sub-Treasury
in Wall Street, very nearly the exact spot where the
first president took the oath of office in 1789, was
unveiled November 26, 1883; the bust of Alex-
ander Lyman Holley, eminent for establishing and
improving "throughout the world the manufacture

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