Ellicott's plaster of Abraham Lincoln in the Capitol Rotunda, 1866
At age 19, he completed a larger-than-life plaster statue of Abraham Lincoln – likely an entry in the Lincoln Monument Association's competition for a marble statue – that was exhibited for two years in the United States Capitol rotunda. The competition was won by sculptor Lot Flannery, whose statue is at District of Columbia City Hall. The fate of Ellicott's Lincoln statue is unknown.[2]
His first two commissions were for monuments at Mount Calvary Cemetery in Lothian, Maryland (1870) and Greenwood CemeteryinLaurel, Maryland. He was the likely modeler of an Infantryman statue for J. W. Fiske Architectural Metals, Inc. of New York City, that was mass-produced and used in numerous municipal Civil War monuments. Company records list the sculptor's name as "Allicot."[4]
Ellicott was appointed Superintendent and Chief Modeler for the U.S. Treasury Department in 1889, responsible for all federal monuments.[citation needed] He moved to Washington, D.C. He died on February 11, 1901, in Washington, D.C. He was buried at Rock Creek Cemetery.[7]
Infantryman, zinc, modeled by "Allicot" (Ellicott?) and mass-produced by J. W. Fiske Architectural Metals, Inc., New York City, from ca. 1875 to 1927. Examples in Saratoga, New York (1875), Chambersburg, Pennsylvania (1878), King Ferry, New York (1882), Arcadia, Missouri (1886), Norwalk, Connecticut (1889), Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts (1890), Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts (1891),[18] Pottstown, Pennsylvania (1893), Berlin, New York (1906), Iola, Kansas (1909), and North Kingston, Rhode Island (1912).
Statuette of Franklin Pierce, bronzed composition metal, New Hampshire Historical Society, Concord, New Hampshire, c.1896, height: 27 in (69 cm)[21] Likely Ellicott's entry in the 1896 design competition for a statue (unexecuted) for the New Hampshire State House.[22]
New England Mutual Life Insurance Building, (1875, demolished 1946), Boston, Massachusetts. Statues destroyed, 1945
^Louis A. Warren, "The Curious Story of Ellicott's Lincoln," Lincoln Herald, vol. 48-49, 1946.
^Charles Edwin Fairman, Works of Art in the United States Capitol Building: Including Biographies of the Artists (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1913), p. 22.
^"Henry Jackson Ellicott," Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Rossiter Johnson, ed. (1904).
^Susan James-Gadzinski and Mary Mullen-Cunningham, "Henry J. Ellicott," American Sculpture in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997), pp. 106-07.
^Michael J. Connelly, "The Franklin Pierce Statue Controversy," The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, vol. 12, no. 2 (April 2013), pp. 234-259.
Media related to Henry Jackson Ellicott at Wikimedia Commons
