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OMS No. 1024-0018 NPS Form 10-901». (8-88) Utah WordPerfect Format United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Section number 8 Page 2 Dallin House, Springville, Utah County, UT. Biography Cyrus E. Dallin was born on November 22, 1861, fifty miles south of Salt Lake City, in Springville, Utah, a farming community settled by Mormon pioneers in 1850 (Mormons settled Utah in 1847).8 His first recollections were of inside a fort built by early citizens for protection against hostile Ute Indians. Both of Dallin's parents were Mormon converts and emigrants although Dallin's family eventually, while in the boy's youth , abandoned this faith and joined the Presbyterian Church in the same community. Dallin was the second of nine children and the oldest living son of Thomas and Jane Hamer Dallin. Dallin was educated in a local Mormon School and later received more careful training at a mission school sponsored by the Presbyterians. Encourage by his mother's early kindergartenlike training and with the support of his father, Dallin began drawing and making small sculptured figures of "toys, indians, and playmates" from clay found in exposed stream beds. At the age of twelve, his skills were publicly noted and displayed with those of a older local amateur artist. As a teenage miner working with his father, Dallin's now extraordinary artistic talents were noticed by a businessmen and mining company owner, the latter being a Bostonian. Assured of the teenager's talent, the two men with the financial aid of another wealthy mining official, arranged for travel, admission and initially sponsored Dallin's education at the Boston sculpture school of Truman H. Bartlett. Bartlett was, for his time, a noted sculptor, art academic and critic. Dallin's education was intensive, sporadic, yet relatively brief due to lack of funds and because profitable work offered him took precedent over formal training. His unceasing studio work and personal junkets throughout the Boston area also served him an education. In the late 1880s, Dallin lived in9 Paris, where he attended the Academie Julian. There he was the second Utah artist to study in Paris by three weeks. During the later years of the following decade, Dallin once more travelled to Paris. In 1899 he was accepted at the Eccole de Beaux Arts the most highly extolled art school 10in the western world, but chose to accept a lucrative commission instead of pursuing further formal education. In 1883, at the age of twenty-two, Dallin entered an anonymous competition for an equestrian statue of Boston's own Paul Revere, with the entries to be inspired by Henry Longfellow's famous poem "Paul Revere's Ride." Eventually, Dallin won the compet ition although his youthfulness, western references, and unknown reputation, and later the lack of donated funds, public support and because of political wrangling, Dallin would not see his Paul Revere statue installed until 1940. 11 The 1883 Boston competition established his career and it essentially saw the closing of it as well, he died some three years after the statue's installation in 1944. Between the winning of the Boston competition and the statue ' s eventual installation, Dallin became one of American's foremost sculptors and art academician. 12 He won numerous prices and awards (see list attached) and executed scores of notable sculptured works, most all of those installed being located in the Eastern United States (see also list attached). X See continuation sheet NPS Form 10-901». - OMS No. 1024·0018 (8-86) Utah WordPerfect Format United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Section number 8 Page 3 Dallin House, Springville, Utah County, UT. Dallin's career matches chronologically that of Frederic Remington (1861-1909), although Remington died in middle age. Where Remington celebrated the Amer ican cowboy, Dallin celebrated and venerated the American Indian, the other he had little interest or appreciation. Dallin has been characterized as a masters of the Western genre. He is most noted for his works depicting the demise or decline of the "noble indian." Although equestrian and indian subjects were his primary interest, and what he is most noted for, his life's work involved the full breadth of 8 Deon C. Greer, at aI., Atlas of Utah (pI'OIIO, Utah: Weber State University and B~gham Young University Press, 1981) 91. 9 Swanson, 90. 10 11 12 Francia, cyrus E. Dallln 1-:30. DaJlln'. biographer IndleaJed he revised hi. proposed Paul Revere sewn tim... Francia, 'Paul Revere.' 1-36, and Francia, cyrus E. Dailln, 240. Swanson, 85.