Alexander Sterling Calder
| Alexander Stirling Calder | |
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A. Stirling Calder at work on the Star Maiden (1913). Audrey Munson was the model.
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| Born | January 11, 1870 |
| Died | January 7, 1945 (aged 74) |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts |
| Known for | Sculpture |
| Notable work |
Washington as President Swann Memorial Fountain Leif Eriksson Memorial |
Alexander Stirling Calder (January 11, 1870 – January 7, 1945) was an American sculptor and teacher. Son of the sculptor Alexander Milne Calder and father of the sculptor Alexander (Sandy) Calder, his best-known works are George Washington as President on the Washington Square Arch in New York City, the Swann Memorial Fountain in Philadelphia, and the Leif Eriksson Memorial in Reykjavík, Iceland.
Calder was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1870. At the age of 16, A. Stirling Calder attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts where he studied under Thomas Eakins. He apprenticed as a sculptor the following year, working on his father's extensive sculpture program for Philadelphia City Hall, and is reported to have modeled the arm of one of the figures. In 1890, he moved to Paris where he studied at the Académie Julian under Henri Michel Chapu, and then was accepted in the École des Beaux-Arts where he entered the atelier of Alexandre Falguière.
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 a larger-than-life-size statue of Dr. Samuel Gross (1895–97) for the National Mall in Washington, D.C.. Calder replicated the pose of Dr. Gross from Eakins's 1876 painting The Gross Clinic. That was followed by a set of twelve larger-than-life-size statues of Presbyterian clergymen for the facade of the Witherspoon Building (1898–99) in Philadelphia.
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