John Quincy Adams Ward was born on the Ward homestead near Urbana, Ohio. He was one of the seven children of John Anderson and Eleanor (Macbeth) Ward, and a grandson of Col. William Ward, who in 1805 laid out and named the town of Urbana. His earliest ancestor of American record is said to have been John Ward of Norfolk, England, who landed at Jamestown, Va. , in the first half of the seventeenth century. For two centuries thereafter, the Ward family took an important part in conquering the wilderness. As a boy Ward delighted not only in fishing and hunting, but also in making clay images of men on horseback and of the farm animals, often working in the shop of the village potter.
Education
The meager education then obtainable in Ohio schools was at times eked out by lessons from private tutors. At the age of sixteen he was put at work on the farm, in tasks he disliked. He milked cows, but he wanted to model horses. Seeing his unfitness for farming, his Presbyterian parents vaguely hoped that he might become a doctor or a minister, and let him study medicine a while. His health suffered. A fortunate visit to his sister in Brooklyn, N. Y. , proved the turning point in his life. In Brooklyn, at nineteen, Ward realized his dearest hope and began work in the studio of Henry Kirke Brown. No better training could have been devised. Student, helper, companion, he remained seven years under a genial, broad-minded master, who in 1854 carved "J. Q. A. Ward, Asst. " on the base of an equestrian statue of Washington, a work still deemed one of the best in the country.
Career
While with Brown, Ward practised every craft used in sculpture; he worked in clay, plaster, marble, and even in bronze. He helped in the chasing and riveting of the Washington equestrian. "I spent more days inside that horse, " he said, "than Jonah did inside the whale. " He passed two winters in Washington, D. C. , where he made busts of Alexander H. Stephens, Joshua Giddings, Senator John Parker Hale, Hannibal Hamlin. His success in creating small objects to be cast in precious metal was such that in 1861 the Ames Company, founders of Brown's equestrian, engaged him to design and model the costly hilts for the presentation swords then in demand, as well as cane tops, table bells, pistol mountings. That year he opened a studio in New York, the city where he was to live and work for half a century. Among the first statues to be placed in New York's Central Park, and one of the best to be found there today, was Ward's "Indian Hunter, " a lithe figure striding forward with bow and arrows, and holding back an eager dog (1868). This work had been conceived as a statuette in 1857. For further study, Ward spent months among the Indians of the Northwest. In 1861 he modeled his popular statuette, "The Freedman, " cast in bronze in 1865, an authentic figure of a Negro, seated, looking very quietly at the shackles from which he had been released. From childhood Ward well knew both Indian and Negro types. His "Reminiscent Sketch of a Boyhood Friend, " printed in the Times-Citizen of Urbana, Ohio, in 1908, is a beautifully written tribute to "Uncle Cesar, " a Negro. Both "Indian Hunter" and "Freedman" were shown in the Paris Exposition of 1867. When exhibited in New York, the "Hunter" met the approving eye of August Belmont, who at once gave the artist a commission for a bronze statue of his father-in-law, Matthew Calbraith Perry, unveiled at Newport, R. I, in 1868. Thereafter Ward never lacked commissions. For Boston's Public Gardens he had already made a granite group called the "Good Samaritan, " commemorating the first use of ether as anesthetic. The 7th Regiment Memorial, a heroic bronze figure of a Civil War soldier on a high granite pedestal, was signed by Ward in 1869, and was placed in Central Park four years afterward. In 1872 his statue of Gen. John F. Reynolds was unveiled at Gettysburg, Pa. Two years later, at Hartford, Connecticut, appeared his statue of the Revolutionary hero, Gen. Israel Putnam. In 1870 he made for Central Park a bronze figure of Shakespeare in doublet, hose, and short cloak, a book in his hand, his attitude pensive. All these works showed the sculptor's solidity of structure and his technical mastery; but the finer flowering of his genius was yet to come. His equestrian monument to Gen. George H. Thomas, "the Rock of Chickamauga, " aroused great enthusiasm when unveiled at Washington, D. C. , in 1878. There were those who criticized the easy pose, the loose rein, but Ward had made deliberate choice of both as characteristic of Thomas. In 1879 came his statue of William Gilmore Simms, for Charleston, S. C. , and two years later, at Spartanburg, S. C. , his Gen. Daniel Morgan, picturesque Revolutionary fighter. With two other figures of Revolutionary heroes, Ward reached the midmost of his career and almost attained the zenith of his art. His statue of the elderly Lafayette, represented as at the period of his historic visit to the United States in 1824-25, was unveiled at Burlington, Vt. , in the summer of 1883. In the autumn of the same year, his "Washington" was erected on the steps of the sub-Treasury in Wall Street, near the scene of the first inauguration. It is a quiet, commanding figure, clad in the civilian costume of 1789, enhanced by a cloak which, together with the upright fasces, solidifies a nobly simple composition. Many critics consider this not only the finest work by Ward but also the consummate monumental representation of Washington--this even when bearing in mind Houdon's famous statue. Ward's "Pilgrim, " placed in Central Park by the New England Society (1885), appeared two years before the Saint-Gaudens "Puritan" was unveiled at Springfield, Massachussets Contrasts and comparisons naturally occur to mind yet without discredit to either sculptor. If the Bible-clasping Puritan is the more dramatic performance, Ward's well-armed and well-booted Pilgrim in stout buff-leather has its own austere authenticity, unemphasized by melodrama. Again, comparisons are often drawn between Ward's "Horace Greeley, " vivid and active in his fringed arm-chair in front of the old Tribune Building, New York (1890), and Saint-Gaudens' equally whiskered "Peter Cooper, " enthroned like a Renaissance prince in front of Cooper Union. Each artist created an admirable characterization of his sitter. Ward, both from circumstance and by choice, gave his subject no delightful adventitious architectural adornments. A more elaborate production is the Gen. James A. Garfield monument in Washington (1887). The bronze figure of Garfield surmounts a stone pedestal adorned by three vigorous male figures in bronze, "Student, " "Warrior, " "Statesman, " symbolizing three phases of Garfield's life. A decade earlier Ward had encircled the cupola of the capitol at Hartford, Connecticut, with emblematic figures; a decade later he was to contribute a colossal figure of "Poetry" for the rotunda of the Library of Congress. His forte, however, lay in realistic rather than in idealized representation. He preferred masculine themes. Of special importance is his Henry Ward Beecher monument, erected in front of Borough Hall, Brooklyn, N. Y. (1891). The commanding solidity of the preacher's figure in the well-known Inverness overcoat is at once stressed and humanized by a lyric quality, unusual with Ward, seen in the two pedestal compositions; one shows a Negro girl placing a palm at Beecher's feet, the other, two children bringing a garland of oak leaves. Other prominent personages in New York life commemorated in bronze statues by Ward were W. E. Dodge, W. H. Fogg, Roscoe Conkling, August Belmont. Among his many portrait busts in bronze or marble are those of Dr. Valentine Mott, Orville H. Dewey, James T. Brady, Col. E. F. Shepard, W. H. Vanderbilt, Abraham Coles, Joseph Drexel, Gov. Horace Fairbanks, George W. Curtis, Alexander Lyman Holley, and William W. Corcoran. Noted productions of Ward's final decade include the Stock Exchange pediment, New York (1903), the Soldiers and Sailors monument, Syracuse, N. Y. (1907), the General Sheridan equestrian, Albany, N. Y. , and the Major General Hancock equestrian, placed in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, two years after the sculptor's death. In the first and last of these works he had the able collaboration of Paul Bartlett. A lifetime of study, skill, and experience is garnered up in the vast pediment of the Stock Exchange; Ward's design, beautifully in harmony with his own outlook on life, makes Integrity the central motive, irradiating a sculptured world of the various activities dear and necessary to man. As to the details of the Hancock equestrian, Ward and Bartlett were sometimes at friendly variance, but Ward, the better horseman, was usually right. This work filled his mind during his last days: after a colleague chosen to inspect it had brought back a good report, he said, "Now I can go in peace. " In American art he was a unique figure, of a kind that will not occur again. He brought primitive Ohio vigor to sophisticated New York and set it to work there. Made a member of the National Academy of Design in 1863, he became its president in 1874, whereupon, undaunted by an honor never before given to a sculptor, he warned that body against "dropping into a conceited security. " "Give the younger man a chance" was a well-known saying of his. No worthy enterprise in art ever lacked his support. On the formation of the National Sculpture Society, he was acclaimed its president. In 1899, when the society and the city in collaboration erected New York's sculptured arch of welcome to Admiral Dewey, he was the head and front of the actual work, spurring the sculptors to their highest endeavor. His own contribution was the so-called quadriga crowning the arch, "Naval Victory" in her sea chariot drawn by six sea horses, a group of brilliant distinction. Ward's art was peculiarly American. He died at his home in New York, leaving a widow but no children, and is buried at Urbana, where a replica of the Indian Hunter marks his grave.
Achievements
He may be most familiar for his larger than lifesize standing statue of George Washington on the steps of Federal Hall National Memorial in New York.
Personality
He was the first native sculptor to create, without benefit of foreign training, an impressive body of good work. In youth he had stood awestruck before Powers' "Greek Slave"; arrived at man's estate, he found himself wholly out of sympathy with the mid-Victorian pseudo-classic ideals fostered in Florence and Rome. "Emasculate!" he cried. He traveled in Europe but never lived or worked there. He nevertheless admired the strength and sincerity of the French school of sculpture dominant in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Strength and sincerity were among his own gifts. Everyone who met him was impressed by his virility, his integrity, his devotion to art. Numerous organizations, from academies to zo"logical societies, claimed his membership, sought his counsel, and gave him honors. He belonged to the American Academy of Arts and Letters; he was a trustee of the American Academy in Rome and one of the founders of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His speeches and writings had style. He had his convictions, his prejudices. He was a good friend and, if need arose, a great fighter, one who well knew when, where, and how to show wrath. "Quincy Ward wasn't redheaded for nothing. " His strong bodily frame matched his mind. His friends often said that he looked like a less gnarled, less saddened Michelangelo. He was a born leader and organizer, with the true pathfinder's instinct.
Connections
About 1858 he married Anna, daughter of John and Rebecca (Noyes) Bannan. She died in 1870. His second wife, Julia, daughter of Charles and Julia (Devens) Valentine, lived but a year after their marriage in 1878. In 1906 Ward married Rachel Smith, a widow, daughter of Simon and Jane (Lefevre) Ostrander of Newburg, N. Y.
