Meagan A. Evans, “An Introduction to French's Four Continents”

Figure D-1. Cass Gilbert, U. S. Custom House, N.Y., 1899-1907. Photograph by Irving Underhill, c. 1908. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Situated on four high pedestals along the front of the U.S. Custom House in Lower Manhattan are four statues representing Asia, America, Europe, and Africa (Figure D-1). The sculptures, carved of carefully-selected Tennessee marble quarried from Cherokee homelands, contrast the darker stone of the facade of the Custom House, where they have greeted passersby from their nine-foot platforms for over one hundred years. Produced between 1903 and 1907, U.S. sculptor Daniel Chester French designed each grouping around allegorical female figures of Asia, America, Europe, or Africa, surrounded by other figures, animals, and objects meant to articulate distinctive qualities of each of the four continents. This quartet of sculptures is undisguisedly imperialistic and articulates early twentieth-century hierarchies of the continents that centered the superior status of America and Europe. The visual forms carry immense political and ideological significance in constructing and defining racialized social structures in the period. They are also relevant to understanding contemporary racial inequalities. In supporting greater equity and inclusion in public spaces, this analysis interrogates French’s Four Continents by discussing contextual, stylistic, and iconographic elements.

These tagged photographs re-situate these symbols in their possible historical contexts and trace the references that French gathers through the objects, clothing, and additional figures in order to show how he reinforced dominant understandings of culture, history, civilization, and identity across the world. 

Figure D-2. Daniel Chester French, Sculpture "America" and "Europe" at Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, New York, New York, ca. 1905-1907, U.S. Custom House, New York. Photograph by Carol M. Highsmith, 2007, Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. 

The Custom House site has a complex history. The land was once home to a critical Algonquin trade route.⁴ Although the exact location is not known, some believe this area to be where the purchase of Manhattan Island took place in 1626 between the Lenape tribe of the Algonquin Nation and Dutch colonists.⁵ The settlement area that became New Amsterdam was eventually acquired by the U.S. government. French’s statues occupy a space associated with the construction of U.S. identity; they face the very spot where an equestrian statue of British King George III had once stood. When American colonists heard the words of the newly-drafted Declaration of Independence, they tore down the statue.⁶ The placement of French’s sculptures adds to this layered history of a public space tied to national identity (Figure D-2). 

The Custom House symbolized the emerging power and influence of the United States as federal revenue often flowed from customs duties through New York. Within the building, “the Collector of Customs for the Port of New York would annually generate more than 80 percent of the entire federal revenue.”⁷ As The New York Times put it in 1906: 

When all the world comes to the Port of New York to be taxed, although they may grumble at some of Uncle Sam’s tariffs, they will at least enjoy the privilege of paying tribute in a building fronting on Bowling Green whose palatial dimensions and architectural adornments have not been equaled or attempted in any other Custom House in the world. Whether this privilege will act as a palliative to the foreign pilgrim when he comes in practical contact with the complications of our tariff is not altogether certain.⁷

One period critic noted, “what more natural than personifications of the continents, in view of New York’s place with regard to the currents of commerce round the globe? They are the groundnotes of the chorus sounded by the leader of many other artists employed to embellish the building.”⁸ Gilbert, French, and others understood the importance of these statues in relation to the Custom House.

Figure D-3. Berenice Abbott, Custom House statue: in rear of N.Y. Produce Exchange Building., 2 Broadway, July 23, 1936, Gelatin Silver Print, The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, New York Public Library. 

Correspondence between Gilbert and French in relation to this job is well-preserved. In a 1903 letter, Gilbert wrote to French and Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907) asking each to sculpt two groups of figures,  “[i]t is my desire that these figures should represent the four great Continents, and may be either single features, or have in composition a child, a globe, an eagle, or some other accessory as the sculptor might find in working up the subject.”¹⁰ Due to failing health, Saint-Gaudens was unable to accept the commission.¹¹ Gilbert wrote to French: 

Much as I admire Mr. St. Gaudens [sic] work, on fuller consideration it really does seem to me better that all four figures, if possible, should be done by one man; a greater unity of expression would then obtain, and it would be a great opportunity to do a noble composition in sculpture. I am therefore moved to ask if you would not accept the commission for all four of these figures.¹²   

French enthusiastically accepted the commission, responding, “these things interest me more than [any thing] else almost I have ever had to do, and I am willing to make great sacrifices in order to be permitted to execute them.”¹³ French finished the half-sized plaster models in 1905, displaying them in his New York studio.¹⁴The Piccirilli brothers finished the final marble versions in 1907. Gilbert wrote to French, “I am going to write you a letter of appreciation of all of the good things that you have done for my buildings [...] [to] simply testify to my sincere appreciation of your great work."¹⁵

One New York Times article stated, “...to every stranger entering the city the exterior of the building announces the presence of a great Temple of Commerce, the meeting place of all the nations to do business with the New World.”¹⁶

French worked on this project for five years, and he did not work alone. He employed assistant Adolph Alexander Weinman (1870-1952) to work on representations of Africa and Asia, hired French plaster molder, Eugenio Contini, to cast the sketch models in plaster, and engaged the Piccirilli Brothers, six Italian immigrants living in New York, to carve models into groups of marble.¹⁷ French envisaged the sculptures and his highly skilled team helped bring them to life (Figure D-3).

Figure D-4. Peter Paul Rubens, Four Rivers of Paradise, c. 1615, Painting on Canvas, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria.

Figure D-5. Lorenzo Bernini, Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi with the Obelisco Agonale, Travertine Marble, Piazza Navona, Rome, Italy.

The divisions between continents mark physical, political, and ideological borders throughout history and into the modern era. Conceived by Europeans, representations of Asia, Africa, and Europe exist throughout ancient and medieval art history. Since the Renaissance, artists have depicted Continent-related imagery, often deriving female figures from classical Roman and Greek personifications of goddesses. However, depictions of the four continents became widespread after the addition of America at the end of the fifteenth century. Cesar Ripa includes the personification of the continents in the 1603 second edition of his text on important symbols, Iconologia.

For centuries, four continents imagery was “used to accentuate the difference between Europeans and others, or between Europeans and their Others.”¹⁸ With the expansion of colonialism in the nineteenth century and into the modern era, the imagery often characterized broader societal themes marked by shifting gender and race ideologies. In these contexts, ideas of superiority deeply rooted in racialized thought circulated through such images. 

Examples of works that showcase four continents-related motifs include Peter Paul Rubens’s Four Continents (Figure D-4) and Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi (Figure D-5). Rubens, a Flemish painter active in the 1600s, depicted in single painting allegorical female figures alongside river gods, which represented each continent's major rivers: Africa's Nile, Europe's Danube, Asia's Ganges, and America's Rio de la Plata. Less than fifty years later in 1651, Pope Innocent X commissioned Bernini to erect an obelisk and fountain in Rome's Piazza Navona.

At the base of the fountain are four river gods, representing the major rivers of the four continents through which papal authority had spread. In 1872, French sculptor Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux created The Four Parts of the World Supporting the Celestial Sphere, which showcases allegorical figures of the four continents holding a large hollow sphere over their heads.¹⁹ Four Continents imagery is a longstanding European visual theme that French intercepts in a U.S. context.

Figure D-6. Daniel Chester French, Africa, 1907, Tennessee Marble, Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, New York, New York. Photograph by Carol M. Highsmith, Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Figure D-7. Daniel Chester French, Asia, 1907, Tennessee Marble, Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, New York, New York. Photograph by Carol M. Highsmith, Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

His conception was four female figures each with an array of emblems to showcase, and show off, his historical research and what his daughter Margaret French Cresson called “his love of symbolism and ancient meaning.”²⁰ Period commenter Charles De Kay wrote that French created four sculptures with a common motif, a seated woman, yet acknowledged that each continent “varied so that each emerges distinctive, each representing a series of ideas different from the other.” ²¹

The arrangement and composition of the sculptures on the Custom House makes an argument for the relational roles of each continent. Africa (Figure D-6) and Asia (Figure D-7) are placed on the periphery of the structure, while Europe and America stand boldly alongside the central stairway. As visitors enter the Custom House, now the National Museum of the American Indian, they can engage more closely with these sculptures than the others. Although varied in composition, each group has a contour pyramid in outline, with the central female figure representing a continent at its apex. With the large-scale central figure and the adjacent smaller elements, the arrangement within each sculpture renders a sense of center and periphery that parallels the placement of the four sculptures. When considering the location of the works on the Custom House porch, one writer noted, “there is no escape from an all-round examination, no favor from a sheltering niche.”²² Working to make the statues interesting “in attitude, curve, and mass to induce one to pause and turn and follow the group” posed challenges for the artist.²³ He positioned other figures and props to work to visually appease the viewer from any angle. 

Figure D-8. Daniel Chester French, America, 1907, Tennessee Marble, Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, New York, New York. Photograph by Carol M. Highsmith, Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Figure D-9. Daniel Chester French, Europe, 1907, Tennessee Marble, Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, New York, New York. Photograph by Carol M. Highsmith, Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

De Kay suggests that French may be exaggerating difference for visual interest among the works by rendering different bodies and adding different attributes. The ethnicity of the figures is asserted through a series of objects. Through the influence of nineteenth-century neoclassical sculptural traditions, the identity of the figures of Asia, America (Figure D-8), Europe (Figure D-9), and Africa become raced as white; by his reliance on these “props” to “race” the figures, French engages with current social, cultural, and psychological meaning to direct viewers’ readings of the sculptures. In the process, he projects a narrative indicative of nineteenth-and early-twentieth-century Euro-U.S. views of foreign people. For example, within America, French relied on the definitive placement of a torch of liberty to trigger the audience’s knowledge of the founding narrative of the United States and of Frédéric Auguste Batholdi’s Statue of Liberty of 1886 installed across the harbor from the Custom House. Commenting on Asia and Africa, sculpture critic Charles De Kay wrote, 

One observer may object that the faces of Asia and her attendants are not types of East Indians, another may not like even so much attention to Oriental figures and accessors as the group shows. One critic may call for a Berber, Abyssinian, or negro type or touch in the features and form of Africa, while another resents such obvious symbols as sphinx and lion. The sculptor, however, has steered a course that suits him and will suit those whose appreciation is worth while.²⁴

The stylistic expression employed by the artist appear in his choice of apparel for the statues. Allegorical female figures are often nude or clad in armor, both signs of strength and invincibility.²⁵ While nudity “can be an indicator of strength through the fearless exposure of the most sensitive and vulnerable part of the body,” its presence can also produce a sense of otherness.²⁶ According to scholar Michael Wintle, this perceived otherness indicates a “male-controlled process of image creation: the naked female form in particular, characterizes the ‘ever-elusive Other.’”²⁷

When French’s sculptures were revealed, De Kay wrote, “they marked a stride forward in his career.”²⁸ One period magazine agreed with the success of the work, pointing out the difficulties that come with such a large and important commission:

Mr. French’s commission was of the kind that is at once the joy and the terror of every imaginative and creative artist… The wealth at his command, for these great personifications, is heavily mortgaged; the list of penalties and dangers is as long as that of the treasures of the imagination. In this case, the pitfalls seem to have been avoided with great judgment. The inevitable, familiar types and adjuncts--without which his presentations would have been unrecognizable-- are renewed, but with a new touch, a new inspiration [...].²⁹

French displayed tremendous skill in his rending of the Four Continents. French’s Four Continents reflect mingled symbols from across the corners of the world as he drew on a range of national stories and religious beliefs. As of 2023, the sculptures are still in place at what is now home to Federal government offices, New York state archives, and the National Museum of the American Indian. 

For more information, see: https://eb-omekadev.oucreate.com/exhibits/show/castingidentities/castingrace