Daniel Chester French: The Chicago World's Fair

Daniel Chester French's statue of the "Republic" with his
and Edward Clark Potter's Quadriga atop the Great Arch

"When our child and I came back to America in the spring of 1893 and went to Chicago, we found Mr. French with a tremendous group of other artists working upon the buildings of the World's Fair. It was an interesting time, with so much going on, on a very big scale, everyone doing something, Millet, MacMonnies, Kenyon Cox, Blashfield, and others. Augustus Lukeman, sculptor of the 'Stone Mountain Memorial,' had charge of Mr. French's particular gang.

Mr. French was building the great statue of the 'Republic,' sixty-five feet high, which was to stand in the Lagoon. It was a good deal, it seemed to me, like building the Tower of Babel. They made a big square platform a few feet from the ground, and upon this, near the edge, a kind of stockade or fence ten feet high in broad convolutions, covered it with a mixture of jute and plaster which gradually developed into the great ripples of a not very conventional woman's skirt.

Of course, it was a good deal of a job for a mere artist to plan this great structure, but I have always said that, if Mr. French had not been a sculptor, he would have been an inventor; and the work went steadily on until finally all the sections, one at a time, were carried out, planted in the Lagoon, and the head and shoulders of the statue settled into place.

He and Edward Potter were also making some figures for the Quadriga, which was to stand upon the Great Arch where the Lagoon opened out into the lake, and four groups of bulls and horses and humans, to stand at the entrance of the Agricultural Building. One corner of the interior of the building was fenced off from this particular work into a rough studio, and there Mr. French and Mr. Potter made their horses with the attendant figures of girls and pages, and here the models came and posed for them, some in Greek draperies, and sometimes, I imagine, without draperies.

I used to go down and watch the work going on and shiver to see my only husband climbing around at such a height. The men were always tumbling off things, the work was rushed, and the workmen were perfectly reckless. Ambulances were dashing around the town at all hours of the day and night, and we wives, sitting at home, used to wonder at each noise clanging by the house which particular husband was being brought home, and what particular accident had happened to him!"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Memories of a Sculptor's Wife" by Mary Adams French.)