Pennsylvania State Capitol sculpture groups are a pair of larger-than-life, multi-figure groups by American sculptor George Grey Barnard, that flank the west entrance to the Pennsylvania State Capitol in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Barnard was commissioned to create the sculptures in 1902, and modeled them in clay and plaster over several years in France. Piccirilli Brothers carved them in white Carrara marble in New York City, and installed the finished sculptures at the Capitol in 1911.
The south group is titled The Burden of Life: The Broken Law, and is overseen by a heroic size bas relief of Adam and Eve. It portrays life struggles and negative emotions – widowhood, toil, grief, despair – but with the possibility of consolation and hope. The north group is titled Love and Labor: The Unbroken Law, and is overseen by a heroic size bas relief of a prosperous farmer and his wife. It portrays life accomplishments and positive emotions – familial love, education, parenthood, religion – and the promise of the future generation.
History
Joseph Miller Huston, the Capitol's architect, chose Barnard in 1902 to create exterior sculpture for the building. The initial sculpture program, conceived by Barnard and Huston, called for eight sculpture groups – a pair flanking each of the building's four entrances – as well as an "enormous bronze composition along the skyline of the main entrance façade." The latter was to represent the Apotheosis of Labor, and be supported by four pairs of caryatids depicting different types of laborers. The groups flanking the main entrances on the east and west facades were to depict "primitive people." The groups flanking the entrances to the House and Senate wings (on the west façade) were to depict early settlers of Pennsylvania—English, Quakers, Scotch-Irish and Germans. The estimated cost for this program, about $700,000, was enough to ensure that it was never executed. By the time Barnard signed a three-year contract in December 1902, the sculpture program had been reduced to the two large groups flanking the main entrance (west façade), and his fee had been reduced to $300,000. The sculptor and his family then moved to France, where they obtained a large barn that was converted into a studio in which the groups were created.
In his studio at Moret-sur-Loing Barnard hired as many as fifteen assistants, including a plaster caster who transformed Barnard's clay figures into plaster. However, the contracted funds were slow in arriving and eventually stopped, and in 1906 a huge scandal erupted involving massive financial irregularities that eventually landed Huston and others in jail. Barnard's assistants continued to work for him in the hope that they would eventually be paid, and this was accomplished by Barnard's collecting old Gothic and Romanesque sculpture remnants from the French countryside and selling them. There remained the problem of purchasing the marble that would be needed to carve the figures. Eventually, a group of New York luminaries advanced funds for that purpose, as well as paying the bond that Barnard had lost because he had not delivered the works on time.