Daniel Chester French: American Sculptor is a new documentary film set to premiere on May 26, 2022 at 7:00 pm Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center. Great Barrington, Massachusetts.
MADE IN COLLABORATION WITH
RICHARD GUY WILSON HAROLD HOLZER MICHAEL RICHMAN
THAYER TOLLES ADRIAN BENEPE EVE KAHN DANIEL PRESTON
JUDITH SHEA WILLIAM SHERMANN
MADE IN COLLABORATION WITH
EDUARDO MONTES-BRADLEY
The story of this first documentary on Daniel Chester French begins in Concord, Massachusetts, where the sculptor receives his first commission to create The Minuteman, a monument to honor the one hundred years from the battles that ignited the American Revolution.
On his return to America, after a brief period in Europe, French finds himself at the center of a perfect storm that will serve to frame his career as a sculptor for years to come. The following fifty years will find America struggling to build on the civic ideals of the City Beautiful movement with a clear allegiance to the neoclassical style forged by the Beaux-Arts movement in France, a period known in the New World as the American Renascence.
Daniel Chester French: American Sculptor pays particular attention to a select number of works serving the film to move the life story forward. Following The Minuteman, the director explores, with the support of French scholars the bust of Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of his earliest works, also created in Concord. Other works included in this tour of the American Renascence by French are The Lafayette Memorial, Brooklyn and Manhattan, the allegorical group known as the Four Continents on the façade of the US Customs House, The Millmore Memorial in Boston, and the Melvin Memorial, also in Concord. The last monument to be considered by director Montes-Bradley, the crown of French achievements is the seated Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial which is currently the focus of considerable attention on its 100th anniversary.
The film is also an invitation to know Chesterwood, the artist's home and studio in Massachusetts, where the seated Lincoln, Andromeda, and the equestrian figure of George Washington -currently in Paris- were produced over a period of thirty-five years in which Daniel Chester French lived -alternatively- between New York and the Berkshires.
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