Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library

Bust of George Washington
1975
Avard Tennyson Fairbanks (1897-1987); Young Fine Art Casting
USA: Utah, Salt Lake City
Bronze
Overall: 45"h x 34"w x 19"d
Gift of Jonathan and Louise Fairbanks
82.45

Large bronze bust of George Washington. Signature under PL shoulder "Avard Fairbanks 1975" "YOUNG FINE ART CASTING - S.L.C."

In 1975 sculptor Avard T. Fairbanks created a bust of George Washington as a young general. Fairbanks made the bust as a modeling-in-clay educational demonstration filmed and broadcast at a television station in Washington State. Fairbanks used the bust he had sculpted in the demonstration as the basis for large-sized, or colossal, portrait busts cast in bronze. Several were cast in the mid-1970s and 1980s. Today universities, colleges, public buildings, and Masonic organizations in the United States and England display over thirty of Fairbanks’ colossal portrait busts of George Washington.