Daniel Chester French
Exeter, Rockingham County, New Hampshire
Marker Inscription
Daniel Chester French / Sculptor / 1850
Erected by Exeter Historic District Commission
The Story
This marker in Exeter honors Daniel Chester French, born here in 1850, who grew up to become one of the most celebrated American sculptors of his age. Though his family soon moved to Concord, Massachusetts, French returned to art after an early bent for the practical, and his career carried him from small-town New England to the grandest public commissions in the nation. He worked in the classical, dignified idiom that defined American civic monuments at the turn of the twentieth century.
Why it matters
French sculpted two of the most recognizable works in American memory — the 'Minute Man' at Concord and the seated Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial — making a boy from Exeter one of the chief image-makers of the country's national ideals.
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