Alexander Stirling Calder was a sculptor working in the Beaux-Arts* style. The son of Alexander Milne Calder, and the father of Alexander (Sandy) Calder, he was born in Philadelphia. At the age of sixteen, he enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts*, where he studied drawing with Thomas Eakins. In 1890 he left to study at the Academie Julian* in Paris under Henri Chapu and with Alexandre Falguiere at Ecole des Beaux-Arts*, Paris, France.

Calder returned to Philadelphia after two years in Paris and began to produce figurative work and portraits. In 1903, he became an instructor at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art.

After moving to New York City in 1910, he taug...