The Falling Gladiator

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William Rimmer based this sculpture of a mortally wounded man on works from ancient Greece and Rome, but its subject echoed the suffering of the United States on the eve of war. The artist began work in January 1861 when six states had already seceded from the Union, and an attack on Fort Sumter was just three months away. Rimmer worked as a doctor who had seen firsthand the devastating effects of war, and his critics initially accused him of casting the sculpture on a real human body. However, as the conflict intensified, they began to praise his representation of torment and suffering, relating it directly to the grim fate of Americans caught in the midst of civil war with one another.