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Swann Memorial Fountain, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Philadelphia Portal

Alexander Stirling Calder (January 11, 1870 – 1945) was an American sculptor, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Calder was the son of sculptor Alexander Milne Calder and the father of sculptor Alexander Calder. Calder first worked as a sculptor assisting his father in producing the extensive sculpture program on the Philadelphia City Hall and in 1886 is reported to have modeled the arm of one of the figures. In 1885 at age 16 he attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts where he studied under the renowned Thomas Eakins. In 1890 Calder moved to Paris where he studied at the Academie Julian under Henri Michel Chapu and then was accepted in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts where he entered the atelier of Alexandre Falguière. In 1902 he returned to Philadelphia and began his career as a sculptor in earnest. Throughout his career Calder was frequently a teacher, variously teaching sculpture or anatomy at the Philadelphia Academy of the Fine Arts, the School of Industrial Art, in Philadelphia, the National Academy of Design in NYC and the Students Art League, also in NYC.

In 1912 Calder, along with Karl Bitter was named head of the sculpture program for the Pacific-Panama International Exposition. Calder obtained a studio in NYC and there employed the services of model Audrey Munson who posed for Calder and a host of other artists.

• Assisted father on Philadelphia City Hall, John McArthur Jr., architect, completed in 1893
• Witherspoon Building Figures, Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia Pennsylvania 1898 – 1899
• 6 spandrel figures, Throop Polytechnic Institute (now the California Institute of Technology} 1906
• Frieze, Missouri State Capitol, architects, Jefferson City, Missouri 1924
• Figures of famous actors and actresses, I Miller Building, NYC 1928

• Sundial, West Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1906
• Henry Charles Lea Memorial, Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1911
• Depew Fountain, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1916 (Calder finished this commission that was just begun by Bitter prior to his being killed)
• George Washington, Washington Square Arc, NYC 1916
• Swann Memorial Fountain, Philadelphia Pennsylvania 1920
• Gateposts, Asia, Africa, Europe & America, and fountain, University Museum, Eyre, Day Cope & Stewardson architects, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1920s
• Shakespeare Memorial, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1926
• Leif Eriksson, Reykjavík, Iceland 1932

Leif Eiriksson Memorial, Reykjavík, Iceland

Depew Memorial Fountain, Indianapolis, Indiana

Shakespeare Memorial, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

The Nations of the West topped the Arch of the Setting Sun at the Panama-Pacific Exposition held at San Francisco in 1915.

• Armstrong, Craven et al, 200 Years of American Sculpture, Whitney Museum of Art, NYC, 1976
• Bach,Penny Balkin, Public Art in Philadelphia, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1992
• Calder, A. Sterling, Thoughts of A. Stirling Calder on Art and Life, Privately published, New York, 1947
• Craven, Wayne, Sculpture in America, Thomas Y Crowell Co, NY, NY 1968
• Fairmont Park Association, Sculpture of a City: Philadelphia's Treasures in Bronze and Stone, Walker Publishing Co., Inc, NY. NY 1974
• Falk, Peter Hastings, ed., Who was Who in American Art, Sound View Press, Madison Connecticut, 1985
• Gadzinski, Cunningham, Panhorst et al, American Sculpture in the Museum of American Art of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Museum of American Art of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1997
• Hayes, Margaret Calder, Three Alexander Calders, Paul S Eriksson Publisher, Middlebury, Vermont, 1977
• Kvaran, Einar Einarsson, American Architectural Sculpture unpublished manuscript,
• Opitz, Glenn B ed., Mantle Fielding’s Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors & Engravers, Apollo Book, Poughkeepsie NY, 1986
• Proske, Beatrice Gilman, Brookgreen Gardens Sculpture, Brookgreen Gardens, South Carolina, 1968