Daniel Chester French and
Edward C. Potter
West of Garfield Park
Conservatory in City Garden flanking propagating houses
300 North Central Park
Avenue
These two bronze works are based upon a pair of
12-foot-tall Bulls with Maidens that
stood in front of the Agricultural Building of the 1893 World’s Columbian
Exposition. One includes a maiden representing Ceres, the Roman goddess of
grain and it symbolized the “Old World,” while the other maiden is understood
as a Native American goddess of corn, symbolizing the “New World.” Also known
as “Statues of Plenty,” the works draw upon a longstanding tradition in art of
representing the harvest or bounty with female and animal forms.
Potter, known for his depictions of animals, created the
bulls and French provided the female figures. Several of the sculptural pieces
from the Exposition were salvaged when the fair was dismantled, including
smaller models of the Bulls with Maidens,
and they were included in a 1908 exhibition at Humboldt Park. The public
was so taken with the works that the West Park Commissioners decided to cast
them in bronze in 1912. In 1915 these two works were placed at the entrance to
the Garfield Park garden, facing Hamlin Avenue, and they remained there until
the mid-1980s, when vandals stole one of the sculptures and badly damaged the
other.
In 2003, conservator Andrzej Dajnowski repaired the
remaining sculpture and recast the missing one and they were installed in their
current location near the Garfield Park Conservatory. In 2010, the missing
sculpture was discovered in Virginia and returned to the Chicago Park District
but it suffered a great deal of damage and remains in storage. At some point in
the future it will be conserved and returned to Garfield Park.
Other works:
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