Ulric Dunbar Explained

Ulric Stonewall Jackson Dunbar
Birth Date:31 January 1862
Birth Place:London, Canada West
Death Place:Washington, D.C., U.S.
Education:Art School of Toronto
Occupation:Sculptor
Parents:Alexander Dunbar
Susannah Jackson

Ulric Stonewall Jackson Dunbar (January 31, 1862 1927) was a Canadian-born American sculptor.

Early life

Ulric Stonewall Jackson Dunbar was born on January 31, 1862, in London, Canada West, the son of Alexander Dunbar and Susannah Jackson.[1] He attended the Art School of Toronto with his brother Frederick and in around 1880, Ulric Dunbar emigrated from Canada to the United States to pursue a career in sculpting.[2]

Career

After working for five years in Philadelphia,[3] Dunbar moved to Washington, D.C. In 1886, he was commissioned to sculpt a model of Vice President Thomas Hendricks that took some four years to complete and was praised for its "straightforward, sober likeness with a degree of honest naturalism".[4] Dunbar subsequently completed a "first-rate" marble bust of President Martin Van Buren.[3] In his lifetime, Dunbar also sculpted models of Sitting Bull, William Wilson Corcoran, and Frederick Douglass, among many others; more than 150 sculptures are attributed to him. He was awarded a bronze medal at the 1893 World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago and a silver medal at the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco.[2] Dunbar served as the secretary of the Society of Washington Artists and counted Rudulph Evans and Louise Kidder Sparrow among his students.[5] Ulric Dunbar died in Washington, D.C. in 1927.[3]

A copy of Dunbar's bust of Thomas Hendricks, formerly in the collection of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, was upon that institution's dissolution transferred to the American University Museum.[6] He sculpted a bust of the German-American landscape painter Max Weyl, who also lived in Washington, D.C. and whose works hung in the White House and is in the permanent collection at The Corcoran Art Gallery.

Notes and References

  1. Book: Macfarland, Henry Brown Floyd. District of Columbia: concise biographies of its prominent and representative contemporary citizens, and valuable statistical data. The Potomac Press. 1908. 134.
  2. Book: Skvarla, Diane K.. United States Senate Catalogue of Fine Art. 380. 2005. Government Printing Office.
  3. Web site: senate.gov. Martin Van Buren. February 4, 2020.
  4. Web site: senate.gov. Thomas A. Hendricks. February 4, 2020.
  5. Web site: Sculptor Rudulph Evans. Nebraska State Historical Society. February 4, 2020.
  6. Web site: American University | Corcoran. www.corcoran.org. Feb 4, 2020.