Career
He studied art in San Francisco and continued his work in Paris from 1890 to 1893, where he became imbued with the fluid style of Rodin. In 1901 he returned to New York. His sculpture ranges from the equestrian Sheridan in Chicago to the apostles outside the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, in New York, but his greatest achievement was in colossal sculpture. His colossal head of Lincoln, in Washington, D.C., and his abortive project of portraits of Confederate leaders, on Stone Mountain, Ga., prepared him for his magnum opus at Mount Rushmore, S.D. Here, on a federal commission, he undertook to carve portraits of Presidents Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, and Theodore Roosevelt from living rock. He died before this work was fully completed, and it was finished by his son.