By 1897, Daniel Chester French received a commission from James C. Melvin, a Boston businessman, to design a war monument honoring his three brothers who had died in the Civil War. In 1908, the Melvin Memorial was erected in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord, Massachusetts. A marble replica of this bronze memorial, referred to by French as "Mourning Victory," was later carved by the Piccirilli Brothers as a gift from Melvin to the Museum. This sculpture relates more closely to French's original model, because in the final design for the Melvin Memorial the figure was reversed. Apparently, the approach to the outdoor monument brought the figure's upraised arm in front of her face, nearly hiding it from this vantage point.
