Home > Alexander Stirling Calder

1 Biography

Alexander Stirling Calder ( January 11 1870 – 1945) is an American sculptor, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Calder was the son of sculptor Alexander Milne Calder and the father of sculptor Alexander Calder. Calder first worked as a sculptor assisting his father in producing the extensive sculpture program on the Philadelphia City Hall and in 1886 is reported to have modeled the arm of on of the figures. In 1885 at age 16 he attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts where he studied under the renowned Thomas Eakins. In 1890 Calder moved to Paris where he studied at the Academie Julian under Henri Michel Chapu and then was accepted in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts where he entered the atelier of Jean Alexandre Joseph Falguiere . In 1902 he returned to Philadelphia and began his career as a sculpture in earnest. Throughout out his career Calder was frequently a teacher, variously teaching sculpture or anatomy at the Philadelphia Academy of the fine Arts, the School of Industrial Art, in Phladelphia, the National Academy of Design in NYC and the Students Art League, also in NYC.

In 1912 Calder, along with Karl Bitter was named head of the sculpture program for the Pacific-Panama International Exposition. Calder obtained a studio in NYC and there employed the services of model Audrey Munson who posed for Calder and a host of other artists.

2 Selected Architectural Sculpture

• Assisted father on Philadelphia City Hall, John McArthur Jr., architect, completed in 1893
• Witherspoon Building Figures, Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia Pennsylvania 1898 – 1899
• 6 spandrel figures, Throop Polytechnic Institute (now the California Institute of Technology} 1906
• Frieze, Missouri State Capitol, architects, Jefferson City, Missouri 1924
• Figures of famous actors and actresses, I Miller Building, NYC 1928

3 Selected Other Works

• Sundial’ West Fairmont Park, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1906
• Henry Charles Lea Memorial, Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1911
• Depew Fountain, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1916 (Calder finished this commission that was just begun by Bitter prior to his being killed)
• George Washington, Washington Square Arc, NYC 1916
• Swann Memorial Fountain, Philadelphia Pennsylvania 1920
• Gateposts, Asia, Africa, Europe & America, and fountain, University Museum, Eyre, Day Cope & Stewardson architects, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1920s
• Leif Eriksson, Reykjavik, Iceland 1932
• Shakespeare Memorial, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1926

4 Images

5 Sources

• Three Alexander Calders, Margaret Calder Hayes, Paul S Eriksson Publisher, Middlebury, Vermont, 1977
• American Sculpture in the Museum of American Art of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Gadzinski, Cunningham, Panhorst et al, Museum of American Art of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1997
• Sculpture of a City – Philadelphia’s Treasures in Bronze and Stone, Fairmont Park Association, Walker Publishing Co., Inc, NY. NY 1974
• Public Art in Philadelphia, Penny Balkin Bach, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1992
• Brookgreen Gardens Sculpture’ Beatrice Gilman Proske, Brookgreen Gardens, South Carolina, 1968
• Mantle Fielding’s Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors & Engravers, ed. Glenn B Opitz, Apollo Book, Poughkeepsie NY, 1986
• Who was Who in American Art, ed. Peter Hastings Falk, Sound View Press, Madison Connecticut, 1985
• 200 Years of American Sculpture, Armstrong, Craven et al, Whitney Museum of Art, NYC, 1976
• Sculpture in America, Wayne Craven, Thomas Y Crowell Co, NY, NY 1968
• American Architectural Sculpture unpublished manuscript, Einar Einarsson Kvaran