Bela Lyon Pratt

Born in 1867, Bela Lyon Pratt was an American sculptor who began his training at the Yale University School of Fine Arts at the age of sixteen. After graduating, he studied at the Art Students League in New York City with the painters William Merritt Chase and Kenyon Cox, and was mentored by the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens. As a part of his education, Pratt traveled to Paris and trained at the École des Beaux-Arts. In 1892, upon his return to the United States, he completed two sculptural groups for the Columbian World’s Fair in Chicago. Beginning in 1893, he taught modeling for twenty-five years at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. During this time, he completed several commissions, including the General Butler Monument in Lowell, Massachusetts, and the statues of Edward Everett Hale in the Boston Public Garden, and Nathaniel Hawthorne in Salem, Massachusetts. In addition to figurative sculptures, he also designed medals and coins, such as the five-dollar coin and the two-and-a-half-dollar coin, which were in circulation from 1908–1915 and 1925–1929. In 1915, he designed a statue depicting the Revolutionary War hero Nathan Hale for Yale University. A copy of this statue stands outside of the U.S. Department of Justice building in Washington, D.C.