“On the bridges are the figures of eight wild animals. Two on each bridge are by Edward Kemeys … It is not only because these animals are true to life—that the posing fine and original—that you look so often at them, always with the result of seeing something new to admire ; it is because they possess that touch of the ideal—that suggestion of the soul—which, lacking in the real animal, is bestowed by the magic of art. Hence they can never weary you, any more than the blue Lagoon could, or the roses in Wooded Island.”
— Hildegarde Hawthorne in The Fairest of the Fair (Henry Altemus, 1894)
Edward Kemeys’ buffalo sculpture on the south side of the Grand Basin at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. [Image from Vistas of the Fair in Color. A Portfolio of Familiar Views of the World’s Columbian Exposition. Poole Bros., 1894.]
Edward Kemeys’ buffalo sculpture in Chicago’s Humboldt Park, 2020. [Photograph © worldsfairchicago1893.com]