Cyrus Edwin Dallin

Lore & Background

Dallin was born in Springville, Utah Territory, to parents who had both left the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints before their marriage. At age 19, he moved from Utah to Boston to study sculpture with Truman Howe Bartlett, funded by two wealthy Utah mining investors. He later studied with Henri Chapu and at the Académie Julian in Paris. In 1883, he won a competition to sculpt an equestrian statue of Paul Revere for Boston, but six versions of his model were rejected; the seventh version was accepted in 1939 and unveiled in 1940. Dallin converted to Unitarianism and initially turned down the offer to sculpt the angel Moroni for the LDS Church's Salt Lake Temple, but later accepted the commission, stating that the statue brought him nearer to God than anything he ever did. In Boston, he became a colleague of Augustus St. Gaudens and a close friend of painters John Singer Sargent and William McGregor Paxton, with whom he played baseball for the St. Botolph Club. He married Vittoria Colonna Murray in 1891 and returned to Utah to work on The Angel Moroni. He taught for a year at the Drexel Institute in Philadelphia while completing his Sir Isaac Newton for the Library of Congress. In 1889 and 1890, he developed a friendship with painter Rosa Bonheur, and together they traveled to Neuilly to sketch the animals and cast of Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show.

Reader's Guide

Dallin's legacy is defined by his prolific sculptural output—more than 260 works—and his unique achievement as an Olympic medalist. His four prominent equestrian sculptures of indigenous people—A Signal of Peace (1890), The Medicine Man (1899), Protest of the Sioux (1904), and Appeal to the Great Spirit (1908)—are among his most recognized works. Appeal to the Great Spirit became an icon of American art and is his most famous work, with versions in numerous museums and the White House permanent collection. The Angel Moroni became a symbol for the LDS Church and served as the model for other angel Moroni statues on temple spires. Dallin taught at the Massachusetts Normal Art School (now Massachusetts College of Art and Design) from 1899 to 1941, where his notable students included Bashka Paeff, Vincent Schofield Wickham, and Ruth Johnston Surez. He was elected to the National Academy of Design as an Associate member in 1912 and became a full Academician in 1930. More than sixty of his works are collected in the Cyrus Dallin Art Museum in Arlington, Massachusetts, and over thirty are on display at the Springville Museum of Art in his birthplace. The Beach Boys based the logo for their Brother Records label on his sculpture Appeal to the Great Spirit. In 2020, the Hood Museum of Art commissioned Cree artist Kent Monkman to create a work that reinterprets the same sculpture.

Did You Know?

• Dallin won a bronze medal in team archery at the 1904 Summer Olympics.
• He created the Angel Moroni statue atop the Salt Lake Temple, which became a symbol for the LDS Church.
• The Beach Boys used Dallin's sculpture Appeal to the Great Spirit as the logo for their Brother Records label.
• Dallin taught at the Massachusetts Normal Art School for 42 years, from 1899 to 1941.