Image of the Day, November 22, 2011

“When as a young man of 18, I came east to study art, there were on the same train with me a group of Crow Indians on the way to Washington, D.C. Their chief was a mammoth person over six feet tall and weighing 265 pounds.  All of them were big fellows and had the dignity of a Caesar.” -- Cyrus Dallin

Cyrus Dallin working on his sculpture of Massasoit. Credit: The Springville Museum of Art

Happy 150th Birthday, Cyrus Dallin! - A native of Springville, Utah, Cyrus Dallin was regarded as one of America’s foremost realist sculptors and was one of the founding artists of the Springville Museum of Art. Born in a little log cabin in 1861, Dallin left Springville as a young man to study art in Boston and in the celebrated academies in Paris. In 1890, Dallin made his home in Massachusetts, where he produced most of his works, but made numerous trips back to visit his native Utah. Though Dallin received many prestigious commissions and awards throughout his life, he said that “my greatest honor of all is that I came from Utah."(Text courtesy of the Springville Museum of Art.)