Hermon Atkins MacNeil

Hermon Atkins MacNeil. [Born] 1866. Sculptor.

Shortly after the turn of the Century, when Ed McCartan and Jo Davidson, boys then, worked in his studio at College Point, Hermon MacNeil already was an internationally known sculptor: first or one of the first Fellows in Sculpture of the Centurion-founded American Academy in Rome, winner of the designer’s medal at the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, a silver medal at the Paris Exposition of 1900, a gold medal at the Buffalo Exposition in 1901, and Ed and Jo were helping him with the Cascade Fountain for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis which won him a gold medal in 1904.

John Quincy Adams Ward, born in 1830, a Centurion for fifty-six years [sic: forty-six years] and one of the greatest of American sculptors, was his teacher. Ward had acquired his training, his inspiration and his themes in America; and so did Hermon MacNeil. There is a continuity here which makes one understand how the great events and persons of American history and pre-history move through MacNeil’s works: The Coming of the White Man, The Sun God, Père Marquette, The Pilgrim Fathers, Roger Williams, George Washington on the Arch at Washington Square, The Pony Express, Rufus Choate, Francis Parkinson, George Rogers Clark, James Monroe, the development of man in America on the pediment of the Missouri State Capitol.

He was a Centurion for forty years, proposed by J. Q. A. Ward and seconded by Herbert Adams: there could be no better evidence of his quality.

Source: Henry Allen Moe Papers, Mss.B.M722. Reproduced by permission of American Philosophical Society Library & Museum, Philadelphia

Henry Allen Moe
Henry Allen Moe Papers, 1947 Memorials