Daniel Webster was hailed as a giant of the House of Representatives and the Senate and as the greatest Secretary of State.
This bronze statue of Daniel Webster was created by American sculptor Thomas Ball in the year following the famed senator’s death. Webster stands with his right hand tucked into his lapel in a pose reminiscent of Napoleon. The sculpture also captured the senator’s rumpled clothing and expanded waistline.
It was one of the earliest patented and mass-produced sculptures in the United States. Ball assigned his design patent No. 590 to New York art dealer George W. Nichols. To produce a series of bronze replicas, Nichols turned to the J. T. Ames Foundry in Chicopee, Massachusetts.
Common iconographic symbols in this sculpture include the truncated column that stands for Fortitude and Constancy, a reference to Webster’s dedication to the preservation of the Union. The two books at the base of the column represent Rhetoric, an acknowledgment of Webster’s eloquence and oratorical powers.
Ball later created two monumental statues of Webster. A modified enlargement of this work cast in Munich in 1876 stands in New York’s Central Park. The other from 1885-1886 stands at the statehouse in Concord, New Hampshire, after original sculptor Martin Milmore and his brother both died before completing it.