Who is Laura Gardin Fraser?

Laura Gardin Fraser (September 14, 1889 – August 13, 1966) was an American sculptor and the wife of sculptor James Earle Fraser.

Laura Gardin studied under Fraser at the Art Students League of New York from 1910 to 1912. Alone or in the freshen of her husband she meant a number of U.S. coins, notably the 1921 Alabama Centennial half dollar, the 1922 Grant Memorial half dollar, the 1925 Fort Vancouver Centennial half dollar, and the 1926 Oregon Trail Memorial half dollar.

In 1931 she was the winner of the competition to design a extra quarter subsequently George Washington upon the obverse. Her winning design was ignored by the then-Treasury Secretary, Andrew Mellon, who fixed a design by John Flanagan. Fraser’s design was coined as a commemorative five-dollar gold fragment in 1999. In 1924, she was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member, and became a full Academician in 1931.

Laura Gardin Fraser is buried neighboring her husband in Willowbrook Cemetery in Westport, Connecticut.

Laura Gardin was born upon September 14, 1889, daughter of John Emil and Alice Tilton Gardin, her mommy was a competently known artiste herself, in Morton Park, a suburb at the become old of Chicago. She conventional her elementary education in Morton Park schools. Laura attended scholastic in Rye, New York, then Wadleigh and the Horace Mann School in New York City. She graduated from the latter in the class of 1907. At an to the lead age she had shown an power in modeling figures and lively in clay, a capability she developed below the opinion of her mother.

After high school, Laura studied at Columbia University briefly, then enrolled for exploit at the Art Students’ League. It was during her years at the League that she met and studied under James Earle Fraser, whom she difficult married.^{[citation needed]}

Although credited principally for her medallic contributions, Laura won outstanding commissions for heroic-size sculpture. Of these, the most notable was her winning the competition for a double equestrian statue of Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson in Baltimore. The competition was held in 1936 and six eminent American sculptors, Lee Lawrie, Paul Manship, Edward McCartan, Hans Schuler, Frederick William Sievers and Laura Fraser were invited to concede designs. Fraser was the only girl sculptor invited to enter the competition. Her enactment was also allowance of the art competitions at the 1928 Summer Olympics and the 1932 Summer Olympics.

In January 2016 a task force looking into Confederate monuments in Baltimore recommended that the monument to Jackson and Lee, along similar to a statue of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Roger B. Taney, be removed. The commissioners recommended that the sculpture of Jackson and Lee be offered to the U.S. Park Service for installation in Chancellorsville, Virginia. The two Confederate generals last met in person tersely before the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1863. The sculpture was removed in the to the lead hours of August 16, 2017 by the City of Baltimore, in wave to the unrest in Charlottesville, Virginia a few days prior. The future of this sculpture is hesitant as the city tries to locate a new home for it.