Alexander Stirling Calder

Calder was born on January 11, 1870, in Philadelphia,^[1] the oldest of six boys,^[2] to sculptor Alexander Milne Calder and Margaret Stirling. He attended city public schools and enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) in Fall 1885, at age 15. He studied under Thomas Eakins for several months, until the teacher's forced resignation in February 1886. Calder remained at PAFA, studying under Thomas Anshutz and James P. Kelly. Two of his sculptures were accepted for PAFA's 1887 annual exhibition, a rare honor for a student.^[3]: 170 He worked from 1889 to 1890 as a demonstrator of anatomy at the academy^[4] and graduated in 1890.^[5]

His father designed and was then in the midst of executing, the extensive sculpture program for Philadelphia City Hall. Calder worked as an apprentice on the project during the summers, and is reported to have modeled an arm for one of the figures. He made his first trip to Europe in Summer 1889, and returned there to study the following year.^[3]: 170

Calder moved to Paris with Charles Grafly in Fall 1890, and studied at the Académie Julian under Henri Michel Chapu. The following year, he was accepted at the École des Beaux-Arts, where he entered the atelier of Alexandre Falguière.^{[6][3]: 170}

In 1892, he returned to Philadelphia and began his career as a sculptor in earnest. His first major commission, won in a national competition, was for the Samuel Gross statue for the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Another early commission was for a set of twelve statues of Presbyterian clergymen for the facade of the Witherspoon Building in Philadelphia.^{[6][3]: 170}

He worked as an instructor in modeling at the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art from 1900 to 1906.^[6][7] In 1904, he won a silver medal at the World's Fair of 1904 in St. Louis, Missouri, for his statue of Philip François Renault.^[1]

He suffered from tuberculosis and moved to Arizona in 1906 to recover his health. After his health recovered, he moved to Pasadena, California, and his family joined him.^[6] In Pasadena, he modeled architectural sculpture for the Throop Polytechnic Institute (now the California Institute of Technology). He returned to the east coast in 1910 and settled in Croton-on-Hudson, New York.^[3]: 171 He taught at the National Academy of Design from 1910 to 1917 and was elected an academician in 1913.^[6]

He was placed in charge of the sculpture program for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, California, after the death of Karl Bitter.^[1][8] He obtained a studio in New York City and employed the services of model Audrey Munson who posed for him as the model for the Star Maiden statue. For the exposition, Calder completed three massive sculpture groups, The Nations of the East and The Nations of the West, which crowned triumphal arches, and a fountain group, The Fountain of Energy. Following Bitter's sudden death in April 1915, Calder completed the Depew Memorial Fountain in Indianapolis, Indiana.^[1]

Hermon Atkins MacNeil and Calder were commissioned to create sculptures for the Washington Square Arch in New York City. George Washington as Commander-in-Chief, Accompanied by Fame and Valor (1914–1916) was sculpted by MacNeil; and George Washington as President, Accompanied by Wisdom and Justice (1917–18) by Calder. These are sometimes referred to as Washington at War and Washington at Peace.^[9]

He sculpted a number of ornamental works for Villa Vizcaya, the James Deering estate outside Miami, Florida.^[1] These included the famous Italian Barge (1917–1919), a stone folly in the shape of a boat, projecting into Biscayne Bay.^[10]

He taught at the Art Students League of New York from 1918 to 1922.^[6]

Two of his major commissions of the 1920s were the Swann Memorial Fountain in Logan Circle,^[11] and the architectural sculpture program for the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.^[12]

He was one of a dozen sculptors invited to compete in Oklahoma's Pioneer Woman statue competition in 1926–27,^[13] which was won by Bryant Baker. In 1927, he was also commissioned by the Berkshire Museum to sculpt the woodwork and fountain of the museum's Ellen Crane Memorial Room in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.^[14]

In 1929, he won the national competition for a monumental statue of Leif Eriksson, to be the gift of the United States to Iceland in commemoration of the 1000th anniversary of the Icelandic Parliament.^[8]

Calder married portrait painter Nanette Lederer^[15] on February 22, 1895, and they lived in Philadelphia for the first decade of their marriage. They had two children: Margaret Calder Hayes and Alexander Calder.^[3]: 171

Calder died on January 7, 1945, and was interred at West Laurel Hill Cemetery in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania.^[16]

Works from Alexander Stirling Calder will be displayed at a new museum under construction for his son's work in Philadelphia.^[17]