Augustus Saint-Gaudens was born in Dublin, in 1848, and raised in New York City. Daniel Chester French was born in New Hampshire, in 1850. Two years in age separated the future (friendly) rivals, who would become two of the most notable American sculptors of the late–19th and early–20th centuries. Each artist responded to the Civil War. Saint-Gaudens created William Tecumseh Sherman, a sculpture in Central Park; the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial, on Boston Common; and Abraham Lincoln: The Man, which stands in Chicago’s Lincoln Park. French made The Minute Man in 1874, and unveiled Abraham Lincoln, his monumental sculpture of the seated President, in 1922. The Frist Art Museum exhibition celebrates the two sculptors and examines the ways in which their art overlapped.
—Jack Sullivan