Felix Weihs de Weldon
One day like today Austrian-born Felix Weihs de Weldon was born. Felix Weihs de Weldon (April 12, 1907–June 3, 2003) was an American sculptor. His most famous piece is the Marine Corps War Memorial of five U.S. Marines and one sailor raising the flag of the United States on Iwo Jima during World War Two.
De Weldon was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary on 12 April 1907. He was the son of a textile manufacturer. He received his early education at St. Egichins Grammar School. As a boy, he was inspired when he saw a nude woman posing for a sculptor; the sculptor let him make his own likeness of the woman. His parents heartily disapproved, so he switched to sculptures of lions.
In 1925, he earned an A.B. from Marchetti College, a preparatory college. From the University of Vienna’s Academy of Creative Arts and School of Architecture, he earned his M.A. and M.S. degrees in 1927 and his PhD.D. in 1929.
He first received notice as a sculptor at the age of 17, with his statue of Austrian educator and diplomat Professor Ludo Hartman. In the 1920s, he joined artist’s communes in France, Italy and Spain De Weldon eventually moved to London, where he gained a number of commissions, among them a portrait sculpture of George V.
A consequential trip to Canada to sculpt Prime Minister Mackenzie King brought De Weldon to North America, and he decided to settle in the United States. De Weldon enlisted in the United States Navy during World War II. He became an American citizen in 1945.
He enlisted in the Navy during World War II and was a combat artist stationed at Patuxent River Naval Air Station in Maryland. On Feb. 23, 1945, he was captivated by a photograph transmitted by the Associated Press wire. It was Joe Rosenthal’s picture of marines raising a flag at Iwo Jima, an image that soon became famous.
USMC War Memorial by Felix de Weldon at night
Soon after seeing the photograph, Mr. de Weldon began working on it on his own in a nonstop spurt of three days, improvising his material by mixing soft Johnson’s floor wax with hard sealing wax. When his finished work was wheeled into the office of the Marine Corps commandant, the man was so impressed that he transferred Mr. de Weldon into the Marine Corps.
A nine-foot model of the statue was produced for Treasury war bond rallies and was displayed for years in various locations. After Mr. de Weldon left the service, a joint resolution of Congress gave him memorial commission.
Mr. de Weldon worked in a coat and tie. Though he hired mechanics and mold-makers to fabricate large works, he had an emphatic answer when asked how many sculptors he employed: ”My 10 fingers.”
Work
Approximately 1,200 de Weldon sculptures are located in seven continents. (A de Weldon monument of Richard Byrd is in McMurdo Sound, in Antarctica).
At the conclusion of the war, the Congress of the United States commissioned de Weldon to construct the statue for the Iwo Jima memorial in the realist tradition, based upon the famous photograph of Joe Rosenthal, of the Associated Press agency, taken on 23 February 1945. De Weldon made sculptures from life of three of the six men raising the flag. The other three, who had died in action later, were sculpted from photographs. De Weldon took nine years to make the memorial, and was assisted by hundreds of other sculptors. The result is the 100-ton bronze statue, one of the largest bronze-cast statues in the world. The M-1 rifle carried by one of the figures is 16 feet long. More than 100 million people have visited it since it was dedicated in 1954 at Washington D.C.
De Weldon also contributed in creating Malaysia’s Tugu Negara (National Monument) when the country’s first Prime Minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman saw the USMC War Memorial statue in his visit to America in October 1960 and personally met him for favour to design the monument. De Weldon was later conferred with the title Tan Sri, the Malaysian equivalent of a high-ranking knighthood.
Dr. de Weldon died on June 2, 2003 at age 96 in Woodstock, Virginia. De Weldon is survived by his wife, Joyce Swetland de Weldon, of Warwick, Rhode Island and two sons Byron & Daniel DeWeldon. He lived for many years on a 12-acre estate in Newport, R.I., among other homes, but moved to Mount Jackson, Va., in 2000. Daniel is collaborating with Allen Nalasco on a biopic of his father’s life titled “DeWeldon – The Man Behind The Monuments”. Daniel will play the part of Felix during the height of his career.
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