Standing Liberty Quarter - Design

Design

The identity of the model for the obverse of the quarter is uncertain. As early as May 1917, the model for the depiction of Liberty was reported to be Doris Doscher, who would later become a silent film actress under the name Doris Doree. This was accepted for many years. Doscher became well known as "the girl on the quarter"; she died in 1970 at age 88. In 1972, however, a quarter-century after MacNeil's death, newspapers reported that the actual model was Broadway actress Irene MacDowell, then aged 92 (she died the following year) whose name was said to have been concealed because her husband (one of MacNeil's tennis partners) disapproved. In an article in the December 2003 edition of The Numismatist, Timothy B. Benford Jr. suggests that the supposed deception was to fool MacNeil's wife, who saw MacDowell as a potential romantic rival. In 1982, however, Doscher's widower stated that despite the MacDowell claim, his wife had posed for the quarter.

MacNeil submitted two designs for the obverse, the one which was successful and another, showing a standing Liberty facing right, which he would later resubmit in modified form in the Peace dollar design competition of 1921, again unsuccessfully. In the rejected design, MacNeil's Liberty leans forward, an olive branch extended in her left hand, but her right hand holding the hilt of a broadsword. According to Burdette, the design was intended to send a message to the belligerents in World War I that America wanted peace, but was ready to fight.

MacNeil's accepted obverse is only slightly less militaristic; his Liberty faces to the viewer's right (heraldic east) in the direction of the European war, and her shield faces in that direction as well. She holds an olive branch as she strides through a gate in a wall which is inscribed, "In God We Trust", with the "U" in "Trust" shaped as a V. MacNeil stated that the obverse depicted Liberty "stepping forward in ... the defense of peace as her ultimate goal". According to art historian Cornelius Vermeule, "Liberty is presented as the Athena of the Parthenon pediments, a powerful woman striding forward" and states that, but for the Stars and Stripes on her shield, "everything else about this Amazon calls to mind Greek sculpture of the period between Pheidias to Praxiteles, 450 to 350 BC."

Vermeule suggested that the flying eagle on the reverse is simply that of the 1836 Gobrecht dollar, seen flying from left to right instead of the opposite way, as on the earlier piece. He applauded the 1917 change to the reverse, feeling that it made the reverse less cluttered. Vermeule noted that the reverse marked the beginning of the end (at least for that era) for naturalistic depictions of eagles on US coins, stating in 1970 that those after 1921 tended to present a heraldic appearance instead.