HENRY HERING. "Defense" Michigan Avenue Bridge Tower. Composition

Compare the composition of Henry Hering's "Defense" to his "Regeneration" discussed in {earlier Posts.}  Typically Beaux Arts, they both utilize a symmetry of balance to organize their images.  I would place the "center of balance" directly under Captain Wells' left foot, which is the centerline of the Bridge Tower.  (The Heald Family escapes to the right.) The images below describe each vignette -- whole, top, bottom, left and right.

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Sculptors in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries worked in a studio setting with a team of assistants. One of Hering's most notable assistants was his wife and even longer companion. They served together with Augusts Saint Gaudens at the Cornish, in New Hampshire. It looks to me that the Captain Wells and the Indian Chief came from the same hand, probably Hering's. That the Native Americans to the left came from another. And that the Heald Family was created by a third.

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