Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 1930
Andrew O'Connor (1874–1941)
Andrew O’Connor, Jnr. [also known as Andrew O'Connor] was born in Worcester, Massachusetts on 7 June 1874 and was the son of the sculptor Andrew O’Connor, Sr. (1846-1924), with whom he trained. He was also a pupil of William Ordway Partridge (1861-1930) and Daniel Chester French (1850-1931) with whom he worked as an assistant. In 1894 O'Connor moved to London, England where he worked on bas-reliefs in the studio of the painter John Singer Sargent (1856-1925). He also began producing work in his own right including a relief sculpture ‘Sea dreams’, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in London in 1896. O'Connor returned to the USA in 1898 and over the next five years was employed as a studio assistant to French and worked on a a commission to design and make the Vanderbilt memorial bronze doors for St Bartholomew's church in New York, which he completed in 1902.
When war broke out in Europe in 1914, O'Connor went back to America and established a studio in Paxton, Massachusetts. Further public commissions followed including a statue of Abraham Lincoln for Springfield, Illinois in 1918, and a memorial to Theodore Roosevelt for Chicago in 1919.
In the mid-1920s O'Connor returned to Paris and in 1929 the French Government conferred on him the distinction of chevalier of the Legion d'honneur. During the 1930s he lived and worked in England and Ireland. He had studios at 50a Glebe Place, London, and in a converted stable at Leixlip Castle, Co. Kildare.
O'Connor exhibited extensively including at the Art Alliance of Philadelphia; Salon des artistes in Paris; Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin; and at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh. In 1919 he was elected an Associate of the National Academy of Design in New York.
Notable among O'Connor's commissions were a statue of General Henry Ware Lawton for Garfield Park, Indianapolis, Indiana (1906); statue of Lew Wallace for National Statuary Hall Collection, U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. (1910); statue of Governor John Albert Johnson for the Minnesota State Capitol, St. Paul, Minnesota (1912); Spanish-American War Memorial statue for Worcester, Massachusetts (1917); the Lafayette Monument, a bronze equestrian statue of Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette for South Park, at Mount Vernon Place, Baltimore (1924); Christ the King sculpture, at Dún Laoghaire, Ireland (1926); and a bust of Abraham Lincoln for the Royal Exchange, London (1930);
O'Connor died at his home, 77 Merrion Sq., Dublin, Ireland, on 9 June 1941.
Text source: Arts + Architecture Profiles from Art History Research net (AHRnet) https://www.arthistoryresearch.net/
