Heroic statues

Sculpted figures, they are often life-size or bigger and are of subjects of special importance within their culture. In American sculpture, the subjects were associated with economic, political, military and social prominence, and commissioning of those works supported many 19th-century sculptors in an era called the Gilded Age. It was a period of romanticizing of heroes and focusing on commemoration, especially in public places such as city parks, town squares, etc. Among the American sculptors noted for Heroic Statues are Daniel Chester French, who did several studies of Abraham Lincoln including the sitting Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial; Augustus St. Gaudens, whose work included many Civil War figures such as Admiral David Farragut and William Tecumseh Sherman; and Rudolph Evans who did the over-life size bronze statue of Thomas Jefferson at the Jefferson Memorial. Sources: Donald Martin Reynolds, "Masters of American Sculpture"; AskART database