Brooklyn Botanic Garden

This bronze sculpture depicting a life-sized female figure and fawn was created by Alexander Phimister Proctor (1860–1950). The piece was dedicated in 1927 and was originally located in the Economic House of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden conservatory before it was moved to its present location in the greenhouse in 1928.

Proctor was an eminent sculptor of animal and American Western themes. He came to prominence in 1893 when 35 of his sculptures were displayed at the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago. At the Exposition Proctor met the esteemed New York sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848–1907), who later advised the younger artist as he executed his first monumental work, two equestrian statues of Native Americans, which were exhibited at the Exposition. Proctor later returned the favor by helping Saint-Gaudens model the horse for his gilded sculpture of General Sherman, unveiled in 1903 in Manhattan’s Grand Army Plaza.

Other examples of work by this animalier (a sculptor of animals) include the ornamental pieces that adorn the Bronx and Prospect Park Zoo buildings, the latter was commissioned as part of a 1930s federal Works Progress Administration program. When President Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) left office in 1909, his cabinet presented him with Alexander Phimister Proctor’s sculpture Stalking Panther (1894).