Taft, Lorado (1860-1936), was an American sculptor, teacher, and writer. He is best remembered for The History of American Sculpture (1903), the first book on the subject. Taft also wrote Modern Tendencies in Sculpture (1921), which attacked abstract sculpture and defended the conservative academic tradition.
As a sculptor, Taft’s best-known works include Fountain of Columbus (1912) in Washington, D.C., Fountain of the Great Lakes (1913) and Fountain of Time (1922) in Chicago, Thatcher Memorial Fountain (1917) in Denver, and Young Lincoln (1917) and Alma Mater (1929) in Urbana, Illinois. In 1911, Taft completed a giant outdoor statue of the Sauk Indian leader Black Hawk near Oregon, Illinois.
Lorenzo Zadoc Taft was born on April 29, 1860, in Elmwood, Illinois. He graduated from what is now the University of Illinois in 1879. He studied sculpture in Paris from 1880 to 1883 and from 1884 to 1886. He established a studio in Chicago and taught at the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Illinois from 1886 to 1929. Taft died on Oct. 30, 1936.
