The Biographical Dictionary of America/Bachman, Max

BACHMAN, Max, sculptor, was born in Brunswick, Germany, Feb. 27, 1862; son of John Hermann Bachman, author of various scientific and industrial works. Max was educated primarily at the industrial school, Berlin, and afterwards entered the Royal academy in the same city where he studied under Professor Wolff. Like most youths of versatile talent, his inclinations were at first indeterminate; music, painting, composing, the plastic and histrionic arts had each claims upon his many-sided nature, but his success as an amateur actor had almost determined him to choose the stage, when he was obliged to enter the army according to the German law. When he removed to the United States, in 1885, his cultivated talents gave him a brilliant introduction in art circles in Boston, Philadelphia and New York. His teutonic stability, comprehensive grasp of his subject, and his versatility as a colorist, sculptor, and musician, afforded him ability to conceive and perpetuate an idea, whether grotesque or sublime, in the plastic medium which is the most common exponent of his art. His work as a cartoonist marked a departure in the art of the caricaturist, and was a significant advance of a branch already exemplified by the great masters of the pencil in America and Europe. Great cartoons had not hitherto been achieved in clay, but Max Bachman began a new work in harmony with the spirit of the age. Some of his larger works include the four figures representing Europe. Asia, Africa and America, supporting the cornice of the World building in New York, and his panels in the State normal art school of Massachusetts―the twenty or more figures being of heroic size. In 1895 he was married to Eleanor May Brown, a sculptor of ability, and a pupil of her husband for three years. Her Bacchante, exhibited at the Boston art club in 1895, evoked much favorable criticism. In 1895 Mr. Bachman exhibited a bust of Cupid at the exhibition of the Architectural league in New York.