William M. R. French
(1843-1914)

William M. R. French was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, on
October 1, 1843. He graduated from Harvard in 1864 and served
for about a year as a volunteer in the Northern Army. He later
took a course in civil engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. He moved to Chicago in 1867.

French practiced civil engineering and landscape gardening in
Chicago for about ten years. His interest in art, however, led him to
begin lecturing and writing on the subject, and in 1878 he became
secretary of the Chicago Academy of Design. Several years later, in
18 85, he became the first director of the Art Institute of Chicago, a
position that he held until his death twenty-nine years later.

French was a founding member of the American Association of
Museums and served as its president in 1907-1908. He was also the
art editor of the Chicago Tribune for a number of years. He was the
brother of the famed sculptor Daniel Chester French, whose
work included the Minute Man statue, the statue of John Harvard
in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the statue of Abraham Lin-
coin in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

French was a member of the Literary Club from 1874, the year
of its founding, until his death on June 3, 1914—a total of forty
years. He served as president of the Club during the 1912-13
season and presented fifteen papers.

Read before the Club: March 29, 1999