Background
He was born on November 26, 1857 in New London, Connecticut, United States, the son of Nathan Day and Mary (Clark) Potter and a descendant of Anthony Potter who was in Ipswich, Massachussets, before 1648.
He was born on November 26, 1857 in New London, Connecticut, United States, the son of Nathan Day and Mary (Clark) Potter and a descendant of Anthony Potter who was in Ipswich, Massachussets, before 1648.
He spent a year at Amherst College, in the class of 1882, he made up his mind to follow art. He studied drawing at the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts under Frederic Crowninshield and Otto Grundmann.
He was received as assistant in the studio of Daniel Chester French in 1883, with whom he formed a lifelong friendship. For two years he worked under French; he also made many studies of animals, particularly of horses. He next went to Senator Redfield Proctor's marble quarry in Proctor, Vermont, where he superintended the cutting of French's figures for the Boston Post-Office, acted as assistant foreman, and even took a brief turn at salesmanship.
He went to Paris in 1887, where he spent two years of intensive study, working under Mercié in the human figure, and Frémiet in animal form, meanwhile familiarizing himself with the art of the museums. In 1889 he exhibited in the Salon a delightful "Sleeping Faun, " with a vine-wreath nibbled by a rabbit, a genre work now in the Art Institute of Chicago. Of a somewhat later period is his marble bust of Vice-President William A. Wheeler in the Senate chamber of the National Capitol; for this portrait he was chosen by Wheeler himself.
After his marriage, Potter had a home and studio in Enfield, Massachussets, and there, in the ample space country life afforded, he created many of his distinguished animal groups, including those shown at the Buffalo Exposition of 1901. Later, finding himself too far from art circles, he took up his permanent residence in Greenwich, Connecticut, where he was near New York and yet could have the large open-air outlook his equestrian work demanded.
Potter first became widely known through his collaborations with French in important sculptures for the World's Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893. In 1912 he was chosen president of the newly founded Greenwich Society of Artists. He did not limit himself to animal sculpture. Among the sixteen bronze heroes installed in the rotunda of the Library of Congress at Washington, his Robert Fulton fills all requirements; the same is true of his "Indian Philosophy" and "Indian Religion" for the facade of Brooklyn Institute, and his Zoroaster for the roof of the Appellate Court Building, New York. In front of the Capitol at Lansing, Michigan, is his dignified portrait statue of Gov. Austin Blair; his monument to Col. Raynal C. Bolling, the first high officer of the American Expeditionary Forces to fall in the World War, stands before Havemeyer School, in Greenwich.
His equestrian works are the General McClellan in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, the General Kearny in Washington, the General Custer in Monroe and the General Slocum in Gettysburg, of which Lorado Taft wrote, "There is no more impressive sculpture on the famous battlefield. " His fame suffered temporarily from journalistic jibes at his great lions in front of the New York Public Library. The lower the jibes fell, the swifter their circulation. Potter's fellow sculptors deeply resented the outrage, but only time could make the proper answer to it. An animated letter of protest from French, describing these would-be witticisms as "not only useless and silly, but cruel and unjust, " was printed in the American Art News, 1916. Other New York lions by Potter were those executed for the residences of Collis Potter Huntington and for the J. P. Morgan Library.
He died in New London, Connecticut.
Edward Clark Potter's true eminence as a sculptor is seen in equestrian works of his own design and execution. His most famous works are the marble lions, nicknamed Patience and Fortitude, in front of the New York Public Library. Equally spirited is his Civil War Bugler, the soldiers' monument at Brookline, Massachussets. Besides, Potter was a founder of the Greenwich Society of Artists. He received a gold medal at the St. Louis Exposition of 1904, for which he made several animal groups such as his Bull and Lynx, as well as a memorably gallant equestrian statue of De Soto.
Reverence for nature was part of Potter's religion; falsity of construction in sculpture he abhorred as a kind of unjustified lying.
Potter was a member of the National Academy of Design, the Architectural League of New York, the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and a charter member of the National Sculpture Society.
He never seemed aware that wherever he went he was a striking figure. With his thick black hair, his large melancholy dark eyes, his aquiline features, his moustache and imperial, he looked more like a Confederate colonel facing disaster than a Yankee sculptor reasonably fond of a joke. He was beloved and respected.
On December 31, 1890, he married May Dumont, daughter of Gen. James Allen Dumont of Washington. Ha had two daughters, and a son, Nathan, a sculptor.
