In 1883, Dallin entered a competition to sculpt an equestrian statue of
Paul Revere for
Boston,
Massachusetts. He won the competition and received a contract, but six versions of his model were rejected. The fifth model was not accepted because of fundraising problems. The seventh version was accepted in 1939 and the full-size statue was unveiled in 1940.[3][4]
Dallin converted to
Unitarianism and initially turned down the offer to sculpt the
angel Moroni for the spire of the LDS Church's
Salt Lake Temple. He later accepted the commission and, after finishing the statue said, "My angel Moroni brought me nearer to God than anything I ever did."[5][6] His statue became a symbol for the LDS Church and was the model for other angel Moroni statues on the spires of
LDS Church temples.[7]
In Boston, Dallin became a colleague of
Augustus St. Gaudens and a close friend of
John Singer Sargent. He married Vittoria Colonna Murray in 1891 and returned to Utah to work on The Angel Moroni (1893). He taught for a year at the
Drexel Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, while completing his Sir Isaac Newton (1895) for the
Library of Congress. In 1897, he traveled to Paris, and studied with
Jean Dampt. In 1889 and 1890 he developed a friendship with prominent European painter
Rosa Bonheur. Together they traveled to
Neuilly outside of Paris to sketch the animals and cast of
Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show at their encampment.[8]
At the
1904 Summer Olympics in
St. Louis, Dallin competed in
archery, winning the bronze medal in the team competition.[9] He finished ninth in the Double American round and 12th in the Double York round.[10]
The full-size
staff version of Protest of the Sioux was exhibited at the 1904
Louisiana Purchase Exposition, where it won a gold medal. The mounted brave defiantly shaking his fist at an enemy was never cast as a full-size bronze and survives only in statuette form. A one-third-size bronze version, cast in 1986, is at the
Springville Museum of Art in Springville, Utah.[16]
Appeal to the Great Spirit became an icon of American art and is Dallin's most famous work.[17] The full-size version was cast in bronze in Paris and won a gold medal at the 1909 Paris Salon. It was installed outside the main entrance to the
Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1912. Smaller versions of the work are in numerous American museums and in the permanent collection of the
White House.
In 1929, a full-sized bronze version of Appeal to the Great Spirit—personally overseen and approved by Dallin— was installed in
Muncie, Indiana, at the intersection of Walnut and Granville Streets, and is considered by many residents to be a symbol of their city. Benefactors of the city would later add to their Dallin portfolio through the purchase of the
Passing of the Buffalo sculpture, which had been commissioned by
Geraldine R. Dodge. A one-third-size plaster version of the Appeal was given to Tulsa, Oklahoma's Central High in 1923. It stood in the school's main hall until 1976, when Central closed its doors.[18] In 1985, that plaster was used to cast a one-third-size bronze version, which is now in
Woodward Park (Tulsa), at the intersection of 21st and Peoria Streets.[19] There is also a version at St. John University in Wisconsin.
The
Beach Boys based the logo for their
Brother Records label on Dallin's sculpture, Appeal to the Great Spirit. [24] In 2020, the
Hood Museum of Art at
Dartmouth College commissioned
Cree artist
Kent Monkman to prepare a work and he painted The Great Mystery, which reinterprets the Appeal to the Great Spirit sculpture incorporating a
Mark Rothko painting in the background. The work is displayed near a mid-sized version of Dallin's sculpture.[25]
From 2017-2020 a race horse named Cyrus Dallin raced in the United Kingdom.[26]
^Broder, Patricia Janis; McCracken, Harold (1974). Bronzes of the American West. New York: Harry N. Abrams.
ISBN978-0-8109-0133-9.
OCLC640913.
^Francis, Rell (1976). Cyrus E. Dallin Let Justice Be Done. Cyrus Dallin Art Museum. pp. 27, 39–40.{{
cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (
link)
^Catalogue of the Exhibition of American Sculpture by the National Sculpture Society. University of Michigan Library as retrieved from Google Books: National Sculpture Society. 1923. p. 41.
^Utah Museum of Fine Arts.
"View of Hobble Creek". Collections.umfa.utah.edu. Archived from
the original on October 21, 2013. Retrieved February 6, 2014.
^Tim Janicke, City of Art: Kansas City's Public Art (Kansas City, MO: Kansas City Star Books, 2001), p. 15.
ISBN0-9709131-8-4
^Utah Museum of Fine Arts.
"On the Warpath #28". Collections.umfa.utah.edu. Archived from
the original on October 21, 2013. Retrieved February 6, 2014.