Daniel Chester French created this large sculpture called Mourning Victory. It is a marble replica of a memorial he erected at the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts. A Boston businessman named James Melvin commissioned the sculpture to honor his three brothers who died in the Civil War.

French is best known today for another memorial—the monumental statue of a seated President Abraham Lincoln that he did for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. In this idealized tribute, an angel emerges from a block of marble. On the lower right, two wing feathers peek out from behind the heavy folds of her billowing drapery. Her expression is solemn and her eyes downcast, conveying proper respect for the deceased. But the image is one of affirmation and hope—in one hand, she holds a laurel branch, a symbol of peace; the other props up an American flag. If you look closely, you can see the stars of the flag carefully rendered in the folds.

Evidently very pleased with the commission, James Melvin offered to fund this marble replica for the Metropolitan. Unfortunately, he passed away before the sculpture was installed at the museum. As French wrote shortly after Melvin’s death: “One of the very keenest pleasures of my professional life has been his pride and pleasure in the work that I did for him and it has been, and is, a matter of the greatest gratification to me that it turned out to be one of my best things.”