William Shakespeare - by William Ordway Partridge
Installed: 1894
Location: Lincoln Park: Grandmother's Garden
Funds for the bronze statue was provided by Chicago financier Samuel Johnson, who made a forture in real estate and as a director of Chicago City Railroad Company and died in 1886..
A marker in the Grandmother's Garden ..
In 1893, when a William Shakespeare Monument was bequeathed to Lincoln Park by Samuel Johnson, director of the Chicago Railroad Company, the Old English Garden was considered a fitting site. A competition to design the monument was won by sculptor William Ordway Partridge, who had studied hundreds of portraits and busts of the Bard of Avon.
The book A Guide to Chicago's Public Sculpture.. by Ira J. Bach and Mary Lackritz Gray, has some interesting information on this sculpture. An excerpt.. The statue is said to be the first in which Shakespeare is correctly clothed in attire he would have worn..
On the base is inscribed Shakespeare's words from Hamlet..
What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty!
On the opposite side is Samuel T. Coleridge's words..
he was not for an age but for all time, our myriad- minded Shakespeare.
1 comment:
What a wonderful place and also a wonderful way to learn about the public gardens in Chicago.
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