 |
Sculptures of Central Park Countinued |
|
Fittingly, the statue of Beethoven, one of the most famous composers in history, was placed on the Mall by the German-American Choir Society that often performed on the concert ground. The sculpture of the composer, which also includes the personification of the Genius of Music, stands now on the site of the original bandstand. The sculpture originally stood on the site of the present Bandshell, which was erected in 1923. A nearly identical bust stands in Prospect Park in Brooklyn.
|
|
|
At the entrance of Merchants' Gate, the main gateway into Central Park, stands the colossal marble statue and fountain of the Maine Monument. A powerful 1913 Beaux Arts monument to commemorate the controversial sinking of the battleship Maine in 1898 and created in a 1901 design contest sponsored by a Spanish-American War commission vice-chaired by media magnate William Randolph Hearst who had a driving interest in promoting the cause. It is a massive 44-foot limestone pylon, crowned at the top with a gilded bronze sculpture of Columbia Triumphant in a seashell chariot pulled by three hippocampi, sea horses that signifies the United States' dominance of the seas. At the pylon's base, surrounding the ship are the mythological figures, Victory, Peace, Courage, Fortitude and Justice. Though the destruction of the Maine as it sank in the harbor of Havana, Cuba claiming the lives of 266 seamen, was later revealed to be a terrible accident the popular jingoistic slogan, "Remember the Maine" lives on.
|
|
|
Frederick George Richard Roth (1872-1944) created this whimsical sculpture of Mother Goose and her related fables. The statue consists of the central figure of a witch astride a goose, surrounded by bas-reliefs of Humpty Dumpty, Old King Cole, Little Jack Horner, Mother Hubbard, and Mary and her little lamb. Roth and a team of craftsmen carved this work of art from a 13-ton piece of Westerly granite.
|
|
|
Located near The Great Lawn. It was after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 that Ismail Pasha, the Khedive of Egypt, first mentioned the gift of one of the Obelisks to the United States in the hope of cultivating trade relations, but it was formally given in a letter dated May 18, 1879 by his son Tewfik Pasha. And even then it wasn’t erected in Central Park until January 22, 1881. Railroad magnate William H. Vanderbilt financed the project and the formidable task of moving the Obelisk from Alexandria to New York was given to Henry Honychurch Gorringe, a lieutenant commander of the U.S. Navy. The move took a decade to complete. According to Central Park’s website the 244 ton granite needle was first shifted from vertical to horizontal, then put into the hold of the decommissioned steamship Dessoug, across the Mediterranean Sea, then over the storm-tossed Atlantic Ocean without stop. The obelisk's base rode on the deck at the stern. It took four months just to bring it from the banks of the Hudson River to Staten Island, finally arriving on 20 July 1880. The final leg of the journey was made across a specially built trestle bridge from Fifth Avenue to its new home on Greywacke Knoll, just across the drive from the then recently built Metropolitan Museum of Art. At its base are four 900-pound, 19th-century bronze replicas of crabs, which were first placed there by the Romans and are on display in the Met.
|
|
|
This is one tree in a grove of Lebanon Cedars at the entrance of Pilgram Hill. Pilgram Hill is a sloped knoll leading back to the Conservatory Water and home to a bronze statue of The Pilgrim. This hill is named after the symbolic figure who commemorates the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock.
The Cedar-of-Lebanon is a biblical tree that has fascinated tree lovers for centuries. It is a beautiful conifer and can live a thousand years in its native Turkey. Scholars believe that the cedar was the great tree of Solomon's temple. The Lebanon Cedar has a sharp, four-sided needle, more or less an inch long and in spur shoots of 30 to 40 needles per spur. Each of the four sides of the needle has tiny dotted white lines of stomata visible under magnification.
|
|
|
The Pulitzer Fountain is the centerpiece of the southern part of the Grand Army Plaza, located at 59th Street and Fifth Avenue in New York. Donated by Joseph Pulitzer, the fountain features round granite basins that catch cascading water, and a bronze statue of Pomona, the Roman goddess of abundance. The fountain, created by Karl Bitter, was placed in the Grand Army Plaza in 1916.
|
|
|
The larger-than-life statue of Union Army General William Tecumseh Sherman, a great American military hero of the American Civil War dramatically appears on his regal horse whose right rear hoof crushes a Georgia pine branch. Accompanied by Nike, the Goddess of Victory, Sherman is courageously led into the battle of 1864 in which the Confederacy was successfully split in two effectively ending the Civil War. This major work of art by famous sculptor Saint-Gaudens ranks as one of the world’s finest equestrian monuments, winning the Grand Prix at the Paris Exposition in 1900.
|
|
|
In 1884 the government of Venezuela presented the City of New York with a bronze statue of Simon Bolivar. The gift was meant as a “token of admiration from the southern republic to her sister in the North.” Bolivar was considered the George Washington of the southern hemisphere, liberating not only Venezuela, but also Columbia, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia from Spanish rule, instilling democracy as the governing power in the region. The sculptor R. de la Cora was commissioned to create the first monument, which was placed among a grove at West 83rd Street in Central Park known as Bolivar Hill.
|
|
 |
roll over image to change |
|
|
Sir Walter Scott and Robert Burns are sculpted in bronze by Sir John Robert Steell, the eminent Victorian sculptor. It was unveiled in Central Park, New York in 1880. It was intended to be a companion statue to one of Sir Walter Scott by the same sculptor, erected some eight years previously. It was the first statue of Robert Burns to be erected outside Scotland and was a gift to the City of New York from Saint Andrew’s Society of the State of New York and the Scottish-American community. For this sculpture Steell closely followed the portrait of Robert Burns painted by Alexander Nasmyth in 1787. Seated on a tree stump with a quill pen in one hand, Burns looks up to heaven. He is thinking of his true love Mary Campbell, who died at an early age. It was to her that he had written the poem “"Highland Mary" inscribed on the scroll at his feet. It therefore conformed closely to the popularly held image of the poet's likeness and was greatly admired, with casts being commissioned for statues in Dundee, London and Dunedin, New Zealand. The Dundee statue was unveiled only two weeks after the one in New York in 1880 and the third cast was erected in the Thames Embankment Gardens in London in 1884. The Dunedin statue was unveiled in 1887.
|
|
|
Most visitors are surprised to learn that only a one-minute walk north from the Alice in Wonderland statue by José de Creeft at Conservatory Water stands another sculpture featuring Lewis Carroll's famous characters: Alice, the Queen, the Duchess, the Cheshire Cat, the Griffon, and the White Rabbit. Originally a drinking fountain dedicated to Ms. Loeb, a writer and social advocate for children, it stood in Heckscher Playground. In 1987 it was moved by the Central Park Conservancy to the Levin Playground and refitted as a water feature, popular in summertime with the many tots who frolic in the water's refreshing spray.
|
|
|
Still Hunt by sculptor Edward Kemeys (1843-1907) was placed in Park in 1883. This bronze sculpture of a crouching panther waiting to pounce, was created by Edward Kemeys, the famous American sculptor who also created the famous Hudson Bay wolves at the Philadelphia Zoo, and lions at the entrance to the Art Institute of Chicago. Situated on a rock outcrop on the west side of the East Drive at the edge of the Ramble, the crouching animal has scared many joggers as they approach this life-size and realistic representation. Unlike the traditional sculptures of other animals in the Park that sit on a base or pedestal, Kemeys situated his animal directly atop the ledge of the rock. Kemeys was so interested in depicting his animals in a realistic mode that he traveled to the western states to see them in their native habitat.
|
|
|
On the top of a large rock overlooking Terrace Drive or the 72nd Street Cutoff, is the dynamic bronze statue of The Falconer,one of the most spectacular statues of Central Park. The sport of falconry or the training of falcons and hawks to capture wild game or fowl is elegantly depicted by Simonds' masterful eye. Often unnoticed from the ground, is a figure of a young hunter dressed in an Elizabethan costume. His left arm is extended into the air while perched at the tip of his fingers is a large falcon spreading its wings in readiness for flight. To get a much better view of the statue one must climb the rock to observe its
intensity.
|
|
|
Located inside the Central Park Wildlife Conservation Center just beyond the Intelligence Garden's entrance to the Leaping Frog Cafe is the statue, Tigress & Cubs. A large tigress nurtures her cubs while c lutching her prey, a peacock, in her fangs. Originally, this sculpture was hardly ever noticed due to its isolated location within the Park. In 1934, it was moved to the Zoo, where today children and visitors alike admire its presence.
|
|
|
The bronze figures, Three Dancing Maidens are the center piece of the fountain. Completed before 1910 in Germany, Walter Schott's Three Dancing Maidens depicts a circle of three young women whose dresses cling to their wet bodies as if they were perpetually in the fountain's spray. One larger jet of water is featured in the middle of their dance, while two smaller jets appear on either side of the oval pool. The circle of the sculpture and base and the ellipse of the pool complement the slightly oval-shaped garden itself. The sculpture came to Central Park in 1947 after the death of Samuel Untermyer. It is a cast of the original. Just how Untermyer acquired the sculpture from the Berlin original or had the cast made remains a mystery.
|
|
|
Located in the heart of Central Park's Literary Walk, right next to the Olmsted Flower Bed stands the bronze statue of William Shakespeare, the renowned English playwright and poet. The statue was place in the Park in 1872 to honor the 300th anniversary Shakespeare's birth in 1564. Portrayed with one hand on his hip and the other holding a small book, he appears confident in his role as the greatest dramatist of all time. His timeless plays which were written in the late 6th and early 17th centuries for a small repertory theater, which he ran, are still performed and read in ever increasing frequency. Shakespeare in the Park is a program of the poet's plays that are performed under the auspices of the Public Theater every summer at the Delacorte Theater
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
