Edward McCartan | Isoult, 1926

Edward Francis McCartan (August 16, 1879 - September 20, 1947) sculptor, was born in Albany, New York, the son of Michael McCartan, an Irish immigrant merchant of limited means, and Anna Hyland. McCartan began to draw instinctively at age five or six and by age ten had modeled a lion in clay. In his teens he entered Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, and studied with Herbert Adams.

He enrolled at the Art Students’ League in New York City in the fall of 1901 to study sculpture with George Grey Barnard and Hermon Atkins MacNeil and drawing with Kenyon Cox and Bryson Burroughs. McCartan supported his widowed mother, who had moved to New York City, by assisting Adams, MacNeil, Karl Bitter, Isidore Konti, Francois Tonetti, J. Massey Rhind, and other sculptors who appreciated his proficiency at enlarging monumental and architectural sculpture. | Oxford University Press