Pioneer+Woman

Date: modeled 1927, cast 1968
 * [[image:https://s3.amazonaws.com/saam.media/files/styles/x_large/s3/images/1968/1968.126_1a.jpg?itok=9waKsui3 width="282" height="361" link="@https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/pioneer-woman-853"]] || Title: **Pioneer Woman**

Artist: **Bryant Baker** Born: London, England 1881 Died: New York, New York 1970

Medium bronze, Roman Bronze Works, Inc. (Founder) Dimensions: 32 x 15 x 16 1/8 in. (81.3 x 38.1 x 41.1 cm) Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of the artist

Accession: 1968.126 ||

"It is undoubtedly one of the most insouciant, sincere and human plastic presentations of the century." Kineton Parkes, quoted in "An Anglo-American Sculptor," Apollo: A Journal of the Arts, October 1932
 * Luce Center Quote: **

In 1926, Bryant Baker won a competition to sculpt a seventeen-foot-high bronze monument in Ponca City, Oklahoma. He crafted this smaller version of //Pioneer Woman// before unveiling the monument on April 22, 1930, to a crowd that included President Herbert Hoover, humorist Will Rogers, and oil magnate E. W. Marland, who had funded the project. The monument's plaque stated that Baker created it "in appreciation of the heroic character of the women who braved the dangers and endured the hardships incident to the daily life of the pioneer and homesteader in this country." According to the sculptor, the boy personifies the future of the American West and the woman's bundle symbolizes the burden of life. The book under her right arm is the Bible, which Baker believed was "a vital factor in building up this country" ("Bryant Baker, Sculptor, Dies; Executed Busts of 5 Presidents," New York Times, March 31, 1970).
 * Luce Center Label: **


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Artist Biography <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">SAAM Collections Page
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