For my first blog post, I wanted to write a bit of an explanatory note on my banner photograph. This monument, located at Forest Hills Cemetery in Roxbury, Massachusetts, marks the grave of sculptors Joseph (1841-1886) and Martin Milmore (1844-1883) and is entitled Death and the Sculptor (although I’ve also seen it referred to as Death Stays the Hand of the Sculptor). Albeit a memorial to both brothers – Martin trained under his brother Joseph – the inspiration for the work was derived largely from Martin’s sculptural achievements.
This extraordinary sculptural piece was executed in 1892 by sculptor Daniel Chester French (1850-1931) under the original title Milmore Memorial. Displayed at the Paris Salon in 1892, the work garnered a third-prize medal, marking the first time an American artist received such an honor. In 1893, French then displayed the monument in the art museum at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, where it was a featured work.
In its composition, Death and the Sculptor is a monumental work in bronze, incorporating both sculpture and deep bas-relief. A young sculptor, full of vigor and energy for his work in progress, shown here as the figure of a sphinx, is stopped mid-chisel by the hand of Death. However, the Death of this work is not the King of Terrors of centuries past. This figure is of a beautiful, cloaked woman – an Angel of Death bringing with her eternal sleep, representative of the poppy flowers clutched in her right hand.
At only 39 years of age, Martin Milmore was already a well-established sculptor in America by the time of his death in 1883. An Irish immigrant who learned his craft from his brother in Lowell, Massachusetts, Milmore’s first significant public work that helped to make his name was the Roxbury Soldiers’ Monument (1867). In 1872, the young sculptor executed Dr. Jacob Bigelow’s design for the Sphinx at Mount Auburn Cemetery, an extraordinary example of the Egyptian Revival commemorating the Union soldiers and slave emancipation. Milmore’s most impressive achievement, however, was the Boston Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument (1877) located on the Boston Common.
However, it would be the Sphinx at Mount Auburn that would provide the necessary inspiration for French as he conceived the memorial to Milmore. Whereas the Sphinx at Mount Auburn bears the face of a woman, though, French’s sphinx is decidedly masculine.
At the foot of the monument, flush to the ground, is a plaque that bears the following poem:
Death and the sculptor
“Come, stay your hand,” Death to the Sculptor cried
Those who are sleeping have not really died.
I am the answer to the stone your fingers
Have carved, the baffling riddle that still lingers
Sphinx unto curious men. So do not fear
This gentle touch. I hold dark poppies here
Whose languid leaves of lethargy will bring
Deep sleep to you,and an incredible spring.
Come with your soul, from earth’s still blinded
Mount by my hand the high.The timeless tower
Through me the night and morning are made one.
Your questions answered, your long vigil done,
Who am I? On far paths, no foot has trod.
Some call me Death, but others call me God.
During the 1920s, French sculpted a copy of Death and the Sculptor in marble, which today is housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in its American Wing.
Further reading:
Giguere, Joy M. “The Americanized Sphinx”: Civil War Commemoration, Jacob Bigelow, and the Sphinx at Mount Auburn Cemetery,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 3:1 (March 2013), 62-84.
Forest Hills Educational Trust, http://www.foresthillstrust.org/his_sculp/scholar/s_tour_milmore.html