John Quincy Adams Ward

John Quincy Adams Ward (June 29, 1830 – May 1, 1910) was an American sculptor, who is most familiar for his over-lifesize standing statue of George Washington (1882, illustration, right below) on the steps of Federal Hall in Wall Street.

Early Years

He was born in Urbana, Ohio, a city that had been founded by his grandfather Col. William Ward, and went to live with his sister in Brooklyn, New York, where he trained under the well-established sculptor Henry Kirke Brown, who carved "J.Q.A. Ward, asst." on his equestrian monument of George Washington in Union Square. Ward went to Washington in 1857, where he made a name with portrait busts of men in public life. In 1861 he worked for the Ames Sword Company, providing models for decorative objects including gilt-bronze sword hilts for the Union Army. Ames also was one of the largest brass, bronze and iron foundries in the US.

Ward set up a studio in New York City in 1861 and was elected to the National Academy of Design the following year; he was its president from 1874. In 1882 a new New York studio on West 52nd Street was designed for him by his friend, Richard Morris Hunt who was to collaborate with him on many projects over the years.

Career

Several of his sculptures are in Central Park, New York City: Indian Hunter (1864) which was shown at the Paris Universal Exposition of 1867 and made his reputation, the Seventh Regiment Memorial (1874) and The Pilgrim (1884), near East 72nd Street.

The Pilgrim, 1884

7th Regiment Monument, 1874

His bronze James A. Garfield Monument, unveiled in 1887, stands at the base of Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.

Nineteenth-century American commissions for sculpture were largely confined to portrait busts and monuments, where Ward was preeminent in his generation. Sculptors also made a living selling bronze reductions of their public works; Ward made use of new galvanoplastic duplicating techniques many of Ward's reductions and galvanoplastic and die-stamped relief panels survive.

In 1903, with the collaboration of Paul Wayland Bartlett, he made the models for the marble pediment sculptures for the New York Stock Exchange. The pediment was carved by the Piccirilli Brothers.

Ward was a founder and president of the National Sculpture Society (1893–1904) and president of the National Academy of Design (1874).

Trivia

• He was married three times.
• A copy of his Indian Hunter stands at his gravesite in Urbana.^[1]
• His sketchbooks are conserved in the Albany Institute of History and Art.
• J.Q.A. Ward's brother Edgar Melville Ward was a notable artist in his own right, a realist painter specializing in character studies of working folk, who was the director of the National Academy of Design in New York for over twenty years..

Notes

Further reading

• Lorado Taft, History of American Sculpture (New York, 1905)
• Adeline Adams, J. Q. A. Ward, An Appreciation (New York, 1911)
• ——, John Quincy Adams Ward (New York, 1912)
• Sharp, Lewis I., John Quincy Adams Ward, dean of American sculpture: with a catalogue raisonnée. (Newark:University of Delaware, 1985)

Wikipedia information about John Quincy Adams Ward This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "John Quincy Adams Ward". It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer). Help contribute to Americola and edit this article.