Caspar Buberl

Caspar Buberl (1834, Königsberg (Tchéquie) - 22 août 1899, New York (États-Unis)) est un sculpteur américain.

Il est le plus connu pour ses monuments dédiés à la Guerre de Sécession, pour ses panneaux en reliefs en terre cuite dans le Lake View Cemetery à Cleveland (Ohio) représentant la vie de James Garfield et pour sa frise longue de 360 m sur le Pension Building à Wahington.

Biographie

Né à Königsberg en Bohême, (maintenant Kynsperk nad Ohrí en Tchéquie), le jeune Buberl étudie l'art à Prague et à Vienne avant d'émigrer aux États-Unis en 1854. En 1882, Montgomery C. Meigs est choisi pour dessiner et construire le nouveau Pension Building, l'actuel National Building Museum, à Washington et avec ses plans, remets en cause les modèles greco-romains en vigueur dans l'architecture classique américaine jusque là et achève la construction du Pension building. Meigs s'inspire pour son art de la Renaissance italienne notamment du Palais Farnèse de Rome et du Plazzo della Cancelleria.

Included in his design was a 1,200-foot-long sculptured frieze executed by Buberl. Since creating a work of sculpture of that size was well out of Meigs' budget, he had Buberl create 28 different scenes [totaling 69 feet in length), which were then mixed and slightly modified to create the continuous parade that includes over 1,300 individual figures. Because of the way that the 28 sections were modified and intermixed, it is only by somewhat careful examination that the frieze reveals itself to be the same figures repeated some eighteen times. The sculpture includes infantry, navy, artillery, cavalry and medical components as well as a good deal of the supply and quartermaster functions, since Meigs had overseen the latter two functions during the Civil War.

Meigs insisted that any teamster included in the Quartermaster panel "must be a negro, a plantation slave, freed by war". This figure was ultimately to assume a position in the center, over the west entrance to the building.

Buberl created dozens of Civil War statues and monuments for various cities and states, including several for New York veterans associations to be placed on the Gettysburg Battlefield. His impressive New York State Monument crowns Cemetery Hill, and a number of individual memorials for specific regiments dot the battlefield.

He died in New York City.

Leading works

Monuments on the Gettysburg Battlefield

111th NY Infantry Monument

• 9th New York Cavalry Monument - dedicated July 1, 1888
• 4th New York Independent Battery - dedicated July 2, 1888
• 5th New York Cavalry Monument - dedicated July 3, 1888
• 126th New York Infantry - dedicated October 3, 1888
• 10th New York Cavalry Monument - dedicated October 9, 1888
• 54th New York Infantry - dedicated July 4, 1890
• 111th New York Infantry Monument - dedicated June 26, 1891
• New York State Monument - dedicated July 2, 1893
• 41st New York Infantry - dedicated July 3, 1893
• 52nd New York Infantry - dedicated July 3, 1893

Other Civil War monuments

• Civil War Monument, Manchester, New Hampshire, George Keller, architect, 1879

• Soldiers and Sailors Monument, Buffalo, NY, George Keller, architect, 1884
• Soldiers and Sailors Monument, Nashua, New Hampshire, 1889
• Alexandria Confederate Memorial, Alexandria, Virginia, 1889
• A.P. Hill Monument, Richmond, Virginia, 1892
• Howitzer Monument, Richmond, Virginia, 1892
• Confederate Monument, University of Virginia Cemetery, Charlottesville, VA, 1893

Other memorials and monuments

• Fulton Memorial, Fulton Park, Brooklyn New York, 1872
• Fireman's Memorial, Church Square Park, Hoboken, New Jersey, 1891
• Dewey Triumphal Arch, Spanish-American War, New York City, 1899

Architectural sculpture

• Columbia Defending Science and Industry, National Museum/Art and Industries Building, Washington D.C., Adolph Cluss, architect, Montgomery Meigs, associate architect, 1881
• Pension Building Frieze, National Building Museum, Washington D.C., Montgomery Meigs, architect, 1883
• James A. Garfield Memorial, Lake View Cemetery, Cleveland, Ohio, George Keller, architect, 1890
• Hartford Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument, Hartford, Connecticut, George Keller, architect, 1890

Pension Building Frieze

• Meigs-1.jpg

  Pension Building|National Building Museum

• Meigs-2.jpg

  Corner figures

• Meigs-8.jpg

  West entrance

• Meigs-5.jpg

  Black teamster

Images of the James A. Garfield Memorial

• CB-Garfield--6.jpg

  James A. Garfield Memorial, Lake View Cemetery, Cleveland, Ohio, 1890, George Keller, architect

• CB-Garfield--2.jpg

  James A. Garfield Memorial detail - Garfield, the Educator

• CB-Garfield--3.jpg

  James A. Garfield Memorial detail - Garfield, the Civil War Hero

• 

  James A. Garfield Memorial detail - Garfield, the Martyred President

Images of Hartford and Buffalo memorials

• CB -War Memorial, Hartford CT.jpg

  Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial Arch, Hartford, Connecticut, 1885, George Keller, architect

• CB - Hartford detail.jpg

  Hartford detail

• BuberlBuffalo1.jpg

  Buffalo Civil War Monument

• BuberlBuffalo2.jpg

  Buffalo detail

Références

• Camden, Richard N., Outdoor Sculpture of Ohio, Chagrin Falls, Ohio: West Summit Press, 1980.
• Craven, Wayne, The Sculpture at Gettysburg, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania: Eastern Acorn Press, 1982.
• Gaede, Robert C., and Robert Kalin, Guide to Cleveland Architecture, Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, 1990.
• Goode, James M., The Outdoor Sculpture of Washington D.C., Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1974.
• Hawthorne, Frederick W., Gettysburg: Stories of Men and Monuments, Hanover, Pennsylvania: The Association of Licensed Battlefield Guides, 1988.
• Kuckro, Anne Crofoot, Hartford Architecture, Volume One: Downtown, Hartford, Connecticut: Hartford Architecture Conservatory, Inc., 1976.
• Kvaran, Einar Einarsson, Architectural Sculpture in America, unpublished manuscript
• McDaniel, Joyce L., The Collected Works of Caspar Buberl: An Analysis of a Nineteenth Century American Sculptor, Wellesley, Massachusetts: MA thesis, Wellesley College, 1976.
• David Ovason, The Secret Architecture of Our Nation's Capital: the Masons and the building of Washington, D.C. New York City: Perennial, 2002. ISBN 0-06-019537-1 ISBN 978-0-06-019537-3

• Portail de la sculpture