Charles Keck Scrapbook

Charles Keck was an American sculptor, born September 9, 1875, in New York City. He is most known for his statuary and relief sculpture, including military and presidential statues, busts, and memorials, medal relief sculpture, and memorial tablets.

Keck studied at the National Academy of Design and at the Art Students League of New York with Philip Martiny, a French American sculptor. From 1893-1898, he was an assistant to Augustus Saint-Gaudens, an American sculptor known for his monuments commemorating figures in the American Civil War. It was during his time with Saint-Gaudens that Keck created his monument to James Garfield, the 20th U.S. president, in 1895. After winning the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts’ Rinehart Scholarship, Keck traveled to Rome, Italy, where he attended the American Academy from 1899-1905. His best-known works include the life-sized bronze of Father Duffy in Times Square and his earlier figure of “America” at the Allegheny County Soldiers’ Memorial, in Pittsburgh. His statues of governors Charles B. Aycock and Huey P. Long are in Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol.

Charles Keck was responsible for much of the architectural sculpture found on the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art building, which opened in 1933. He created a series of 23 limestone panels depicting westward expansion and the attendant conquest of indigenous peoples on the exterior of the museum’s east façade. The panels include scenes of trappers, traders, scouts, and wagon trains heading west from Westport Landing in Missouri. The 24 panels of the museum’s bronze east side doors--which Keck’s brother, architect Max Keck, was also involved with--show passages from Longfellow’s poem, Hiawatha. The grillwork around the south and east doors incorporates the zodiac signs of museum benefactors William Rockhill Nelson, Ida Nelson, Laura Nelson Kirkwood, and Irwin Kirkwood, with oak-leaf motifs added in memory of William Rockhill Nelson’s home Oak Hall, which formerly stood on the site of the museum. Other works by Keck in Kansas City include historical friezes on the Jackson County courthouse and the equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson located there.

Keck died April 23, 1951.