Edward Field Sanford

1886-1951

Edward Field Sanford, Junior was born in New York on April 6th, 1886, a descendant of old New York and New England families.

He studied at the Art Students League and the National Academy of Design in 1907 and 1908. During the next two years he attended the Academie Julian at Paris and the Royal Academy at Munich and traveled extensively in Europe, studying the sculpture of all periods.

In 1914 he modeled a bronze "Pegasus" for the Rhode Island School of Design. In the next year the architectural sculpture which was to be his special interest began with two large groups for the Core Mausoleum, Norfolk, Virginia. The Charles Francis Adams Memorial was placed at Washington and Lee University and a commemorative tablet at Columbia University.

He designed fountains for the estate of Mr. Joseph C. Baldwin, Junior, Mount Kisco, New York; "A Nereid" for that of Mr. Benjamin Stern at Roslyn, Long Island, and others.

In 1923 he was at work on his greatest achievement, the sculpture for the State Capitol at Sacramento, which comprised two pediments, four colossal figures, two life-size bronze figures, and twenty bas-relief panels.

From 1923 to 1925 he reorganized the department of sculpture of the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design, became the director, and inaugurated the Paris Prize. Three colossal Gothic figures over the door and a finial representing Electricity were designed for the Alabama Power Company Building, Birmingham. Another colossal figure was the "Victory" for the Payne Whitney Gymnasium, Yale University.

He created two of the groups for the Bronx County Court House. A bronze facade was made for the Francis P. Garvan Mausoleum in Woodlawn Cemetery and bronze doors for Girard College, Philadelphia. He carved in low relief an animal frieze of twelve colossal panels for the base of the New York State Roosevelt Memorial. Ill health caused him to retire from his profession in 1933, he then resided in the James Semple House, Williamsburg, Virginia.