Eagle's Nest Art Colony - Major Works at Eagle's Nest

Major Works At Eagle's Nest

In the summer of 1843, more than 50 years before the colony occupied the land, Margaret Fuller made her only visit to Oregon, Illinois. Walking along the east bank of the Rock River during her visit, she noticed the natural spring at the base of the bluff. She dubbed the spring "Ganymede Spring", and later sat down beneath the Eagle's Nest Tree, and penned her famous poem "Ganymede to His Eagle". An island at the center of the Rock River across from the eventual colony was named Margaret Fuller Island in her honor.

Southeast of the former location of Taft's studio is the 1905 sculpture The Funeral Procession. The piece was the collaborative work of six of Taft's students who had taken up residence at the colony for the summer. The assignment required each student to create a human figure but left the subject of the sculpture to their collective choice. The end result is a piece with six human figures carrying a casket on their shoulders.

Standing prominently on Eagle's Nest Bluff is Lorado Taft's famed Black Hawk Statue; the bluff is now part of Lowden State Park. The statue was created by Lorado Taft, beginning in 1908. Taft at first created smaller studies of what would become the statue. The statue itself was dedicated in 1911, Taft noted at the dedication that the statue seemed to have grown out of the ground. The statue stands 125 feet (38 m) above the Rock River, though its height only accounts for 48 feet (15 m) of that. Black Hawk weighs in at 536,770 pounds and is said to be the second largest concrete monolithic statue in the world.