Alexander Stirling Calder (January 11, 1870 – January 7, 1945) was an American sculptor and teacher. He was the son of sculptor Alexander Milne Calder and the father of sculptor Alexander (Sandy) Calder. His best-known works are George Washington as President on the Washington Square Arch in New York City, the Swann Memorial Fountain in Philadelphia, and the Leif Eriksson Memorial in Reykjavík, Iceland. Education A. Stirling Calder was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of sculptor Alexander Milne Calder and Margaret Stirling. He attended city public schools, and enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Fall 1885, at age 15. He studied under Thomas Eakins for several months, until the teacher's forced resignation in February 1886. Calder remained at PAFA, studying under Thomas Anshutz and James P. Kelly. Two of his sculptures were accepted for PAFA's 1887 annual exhibition, a rare honor for a student. His father designed and was then in the midst of executing, the extensive sculpture program for Philadelphia City Hall. Calder worked as an apprentice on the project during the summers, and is reported to have modeled an arm for one of the figures. He made his first trip to Europe in Summer 1889, and returned there to study the following year. Calder moved to Paris in Fall 1890, where he studied at the Académie Julian under Henri Michel Chapu. The following year, he was accepted at the École des Beaux-Arts, where he entered the atelier of Alexandre Falguière. Career In 1892, he returned to Philadelphia and began his career as a sculptor in earnest. His first major commission, won in a national competition, was for a larger-than-life-size statue of Dr. Samuel Gross (1895–97) for the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Calder replicated the pose of Dr. Gross from Eakins's 1875 painting The Gross Clinic. Another early commission was for a set of twelve larger-than-life-size statues of Presbyterian clergymen for the facade of the Witherspoon Building (1898–99) in Philadelphia. In 1906, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member, and became a full member in 1913. In Pasadena, he modeled architectural sculpture for the Throop Polytechnic Institute (now the California Institute of Technology). He returned to the east coast in 1910. In 1912, he was named acting-chief (under Karl Bitter) of the sculpture program for the Panama-Pacific Exposition, a World's Fair to open in San Francisco, California,