Albert Laessle

Artist Biography

Animal sculptor Albert Laessle, associated with the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was
born in 1877. Taking a page from similar criticism leveled against the great French sculptor,
Auguste Rodin, Laessle recalled that his work was so realistic, that, as a young artist, his
fellow students accused him of casting his animals directly from life, rather than modeling
them. Whereupon Laessle made a wax sculpture of the same subject to prove them wrong.
Two Laessle sculptures, Locust and Pine Cone and Frog and Butterfly are in The Peabody Art
Collection, in the Maryland State Archives, Annapolis. Albert Laessle sculpted lions to flank
the three portals of the loggia of the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco,
California. His 1917 sculpture of Penguins, may be found in Fairmount Park (East Park and
West Park on the banks of the Schuylkill River) in Philadelphia and Brookgreen Gardens in
South Carolina. Laessle's two-foot-high sculpture of a goat, Billy, based on an animal
belonging to the Laessle family, has stood since 1919 in Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Square. A
park at the Walt Whitman Center, in Camden, New Jersey, has Laessle's 1928 sculptural
group of Pan, Dancing Goat, and Duck and Turtle Fountain. Johnson Park, in that city, also
features Laessle's animal sculpture.
Laessle’s sculptures can be found in numerous public collections, including: Brookgreen
Gardens, South Carolina; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Pennsylvania
Academy of the Fine Arts; Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh; and The Baltimore Museum of
Art.