me impressiveness her niche at the head of the grand stairway of the
Masonic Temple on Twenty-fourth Street.

From 1875 to 1877 he had a studio in New York, where he seems to have
executed some of his earliest portrait reliefs. During these years he
came into contact with La Farge, for whom he turned painter and aided
in the execution of the decorations of Trinity Church in Boston. It was
at this time, also, that he received his first commissions for important
public work, those for the Farragut statue in Madison Square, the
Randall at Sailors' Snug Harbor, and the angels for Saint Thomas's
Church. He had married Augusta F. Homer in 1877, and in that year,
taking his bride and his commissions with him, he returned to Paris,
feeling, as many another young Paris-bred artist has felt, that there
only could such important works be properly carried out. The "Farragut"
was completed and exhibited in the plaster at the Salon of 1880, and
from that time his success was assured. For the rest of his life he was
constantly busy, receiving almost more commissions for work of
importance than it was possible for him to carry out. He returned to New
York in 1880, and in 1881 he opened the studio in Thirty-sixth Street,
where he remained for sixteen years and where so many of his greatest
works were executed. From that studio came many of his exquisite
portraits in relief, his caryatids and angelic figures, such as those
for the Morgan tomb, so unfortunately destroyed by fire in 1882 (a fate
since shared by the earlier angels of Saint Thomas's), the great statues
of Lincoln and Chapin, the "Shaw Memorial," and the "Adams Memorial";
and in it was done all the preliminary work of the great equestrian
monument to General Sherman.

It is in these years of his prime that he will ever be most fondly
remembered by those--and they are many--who had the privilege of his
friendship. Admittedly our foremost sculptor, and one of the founders of
the Society of American Artists, he became at once a person of
importance in the world of art; and as his brilliant career developed
he established intimate relationships with an ever-widening circle of
men in every walk of life, while no one who ever knew him well can have
felt anything but an abiding affection for him. That long, white studio
became a familiar meeting-place for all who were interested in any form
of art; and the Sunday afternoon concerts that were held there for many
years will be looked