Marshall Fredericks greets an unidentified man in front of "Leaping Gazelle" at Chrysler Corporation

Marshall Fredericks greets an unidentified man in front of "Leaping Gazelle" at Chrysler Corporation

Animal sculpture--20th century.
Bronze sculpture, American--20th century.
Chrysler Corporation.
Fredericks, Marshall M., 1908-1998

In 1936, Fredericks won a National Award Competition to design a fountain for the Levi L. Barbour Memorial, located on Belle Isle, an island park in Detroit, Michigan. Mounted 16 feet high on a granite pedestal, the bronze sculpture sits in a fountain basin. Four small carved granite animals surround the gazelle.

Fredericks said: “I used this gazelle which to me has always been…sort of the perfection of the four-leggeds. …[I]t’s just a marvelous expression of the animal kingdom, and the lines of it are so beautiful and it just seemed to set itself up as a natural in that marvelous natural environment [of] Belle Isle.”

Leaping Gazelle is the first commission Fredericks received and it initiated his career as a distinguished public sculptor.

Marshall M. Fredericks Papers
Series V, Box 24 Folder 8

1996-05

Use of this image requires permission from the Marshall M. Fredericks Archives.

V-24-08

image/jpeg

Image

Auburn Hills (Mich.)

Color print

4" x 6"