Evelyn Beatrice Longman - Career

Career

Longman's 1915 Genius of Electricity, a gilded male nude, was commissioned by AT&T Corporation for the top of their corporate headquarters in downtown Manhattan. The figure was reproduced on Bell Telephone directories across the country from 1938 until the 1960s. Around 1920, Longman assisted Daniel Chester French and Henry Bacon by creating some of the sculptural decorations for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. In 1923, she won the Watrous Gold Medal for best sculpture.

She is also often noted for sculpting the hands on the Lincoln Memorial, although this is not confirmed to be true. She assisted with many aspects of the Lincoln Memorial, but French himself modeled the hands.

In 1918, she was hired by Nathaniel Horton Batchelder, the Headmaster of the Loomis Chaffee School, to sculpt a memorial to his late wife. Two years later she married Batchelder, moving to Connecticut at the height of her career. During the next 30 years, Longman completed dozens of commissions, both architectural and independent works, throughout the United States. She was an active member of the Loomis Chaffee School, donating countless items that are currently held still at the school as well as in the surrounding town.

After her husband's retirement, Evelyn moved her studio to Cape Cod, where in 1954 she died as one of the most respected and honored sculptors in American history.

It is rumored that after her death, her husband scattered her ashes at Chesterwood, the home and studio of her former employer and mentor, Daniel Chester French.