Elsie Stevens, Audrey Munson, and the Model for the 1916 Dime and Half Dollar

A letter of February 22, 1919, from Adolph Alexander Weinman to Mrs. Wallace Stevens, explains that "Sculptured portraits" such as the one he has been doing for Elsie take time and patience and that at the moment he has other projects he must finish. . [...]a completion date of May 1920 seems reasonable for this project. Since the head on the figures is nondescript, the emphasis is on the symbolic stance of the body.9 Sketch number 1 is closest to the obverse (head) of the Walking Liberty design on the half dollar, and sketch number 5 is a prototype of the eagle on the reverse, which was a requirement for both the quarter and half dollar. (qtd. in Burdette 23) Soon after, since there was concern that one coin would be designed by two people, Woolley asked MacNeil to submit more proposals for the eagle on the reverse of the quarter, and one was accepted. [...]Weinman designed both the dime and half dollar; MacNeil, the quarter; and Polásek, nothing.11 As with the Winged Liberty dime, Burdette believes that the model for the profile of Walking Liberty was taken from the face of Victory on the Union Soldiers and Sailors Monument: "Liberty's bouquet of laurel and oak mimics the 1909 monument's vigorous foliage. Fig. 9. [...]although Munson might have appealed to artists as possessing the Greek ideal of a perfectly formed body, she "was sometimes only a segment of the final work of art," conclude Rozas and Gottehrer.