FRASER, JAMES EARLE ), American sculp tor, was born at Winona, Minn., on Nov. 4, 1876. In the public schools of Minneapolis he early revealed his talent by carving figures from sticks of chalk given him to do his sums. His father, an engineer, then at work on the construction of the Northern Pacific railroad, had the boy with him in the Dakotas, where his friendship with the Indians, the sight of buffalo bones whitening on the prairies where herds had once trod, gave him the inspiration for much of his future Indian subjects—his "End of the Trail," "Prayer" and the design for the United States "buffalo" five-cent piece. At 18 he entered the Art institute in Chicago, and six months later the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. His work ex hibited in the Salon of 1897-98 won the prize offered for the best work of an American artist and so impressed Saint Gaudens that he invited the youth to become one of his assistants. Fraser worked with Saint Gaudens until 1902, when he returned to Amer ica and established his own studio. In 1906 he became an instruc tor in the Art Students' league. Among his best known works are the bust of Theodore Roosevelt in the Senate chamber, that of Alexander Hamilton in the Treasury building at Washington ; and the statue "Journey Through Life" in the Rock Creek cemetery, the monument to Bishop Potter in the cathedral of St. John the Divine, the portrait relief of Morris K. Jessup in the Museum of Natural History, New York city; the equestrian group "The End of the Trail," exhibited at the Panama-Pacific International Expo sition in San Francisco in 1915 and later placed in Waupun, Wis.; the "Canadian Officer," in Winnipeg and "Victory," in the Bank of Montreal.
See Helen Christine Bennett, "James Earle Fraser, Sculptor," Arts and Decoration, vol. i., p. 375-376 (191I) ; and Effie Seachrest, "James Earle Fraser," Am. Mag. of Art, vol. viii., p. 276-278 (Washington, 1917) .