Leonard Volk
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Leonard Wells Volk (7 November 1828 - 19 August 1895) was an American sculptor.
He was born at Wellstown (now Wells), Hamilton County, New York. He first followed the trade of a marble cutter with his father at Pittsfield, Massachusetts. In 1848 he opened a studio at St Louis, Missouri, and in 1855 was sent by his wife's cousin, politician Stephen A. Douglas, to Rome to study. Returning to America in 1857, he settled in Chicago, where he helped to establish an Academy of Design and was for eight years its head.
Among his principal works:
- the Douglas monument at Chicago, Illinois
- the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument at Rochester, New York
- statues of Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas in the Illinois State Capitol at Springfield, Illinois
- a statue of General James Shields in Statuary Hall, United States Capitol
- statues of Elihu B. Washburne, Zachariah Chandler and David Davis
In 1860 he made a life mask of Lincoln, of whom only one other was ever made (by Clark Mills in 1865).
His son, Douglas Volk (b. 1856), figure and portrait painter, who studied under J. L. Gerome in Paris, became a member of the Society of American Artists in 1880 and of the National Academy of Design in 1899.
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
